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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

POET, DRAMATIST, AND MAN 



;The?^o. 




THE ELY HOUSE PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 

The original, now In the possession of the Trustees of the Birthplace at Stratford, formerly 
belonged to the Bishop of Ely. It is inscribed ^ 39 x 1603, 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

POET, DRAMATIST, AND MAN 



HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE 

AUTHOR OF " MV STUDY FIRE," " UNDER THE TREES AND 
ELSEWHERE," " THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT," ETC. 



WITH ONE HUNDRED HLUSTRATIONS 



THmiD* EDITION, '\tiffl 'c6}?'R1iC'Ti6nS 



:S'£iM fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
1 90 1 

All ris:hts reserved 



Ho' 



Copyright, igoo, 
By the outlook CO. 

Copyright, igoo, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped October, igoo. Reprinted December, 
igoo ; October, igoi. 



Woriiiooli l^xese 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



To 

My Mother 

and 

To the Memory of 

My Father 



ON SHAKESPEARE 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 

The labour of an age in piled stones ? 

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 

Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? 

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 

For whilst, to the shame of slow endeavouring art, 

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, 

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, 

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving, 

And so sepulchered, in such pomp dost lie 

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 

John Milton. 1630. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Forerunners of Shakespeare i 



CHAPTER H 
Birth and Breeding 29 

CHAPTER III 
Shakespeare's Country . . . . . . . -52 

CHAPTER IV 
Marriage and London 76 

CHAPTER V 
The London Stage . . loi 

CHAPTER VI 
Apprenticeship 125 

CHAPTER VII 
The First Fruits 148 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Poetic Period -177 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

The Sonnets 207 



CHAPTER X 
The Historical Plays 228 

CHAPTER XI 
The Comedies 248 

CHAPTER XII ■ 
The Approach of Tragedy 271 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Earlier Tragedies 290 

CHAPTER XIV 
The Later Tragedies 314 

CHAPTER XV 
The Ethical Significance of the Tragedies . . . 342 

CHAPTER XVI 
The Romances 360 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Last Years at Stratford 387 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FULL-PAGE PLATES, ETC. 

The Ely House Portrait of William Shakespeare Frontispiece 

Mary Arden's Cottage facing page 32 

Grammar School, Stratford . . . . " "46 

In THE Garden of Anne Hathaway's Cottage . " "90 

The figure in the foreground is the late custodian, Mrs. Baker. 

Shakespeare's London .... between pages 120, 121 

Double page, half-tone map. Stilliard's map of the city in the reign 
of Elizabeth. 

Stratford FROM the Memorial Theatre . facing page i"] 2 

Warwick Castle " " 256 

The Memorial Theatre, Stratford . . , " "316 
From Clopton Bridge. 

The House on Henley Street, Stratford . . " " 348 

Commonly known as the Birthplace. 

The Garden at New Place, Stratford . . " " 286 
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 

PAGE 

A Mystery Play in York Cathedral 8 

Pageants on which were given Miracle Plays .... 12 

Four Morality Players: Contemplation — Perseverance — Imagi- 
nation, and Free Will . . . . . . . .16 

From a black-letter copy of the Morality " Hycke-Scorner." 
The Talbot Inn — Chaucer's " Tabard " .... - 20 

Where the early players often raised their rude stage. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Globe Theatre, Southwark 

An Early Drawing of Shakespeare's Birthplace . 

Shakespeare's Birth Record 

The three crosses mark the line. 

Font in Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was baptized 

The Room in which Shakespeare was born . 

A Bit of the Wall of the Room in which Shakespeare was born 

Latin Room, Grammar School, Stratford 

The Approach to Holy Trinity Church 

The Guild Chamber in the Grammar School 

Guy's Cliff and the Avon 

From an old print. 

Queen Elizabeth 

Kenilworth Castle 



From an old print, showing the castle as it appeared in 1620, 
castle was destroyed during and after the Civil War. 



Mervyn's Tower 

In which Amy Robsart was imprisoned. 

The Earl of Leicester, 1588 ..... 

The Path from the Forest of Arden to Stratford . 

A typical English footpath through the meadows, with hedges of haw- 
thorn on either side. These paths are sometimes reached by a stile 
as in this case, and sometimes by a kissing-gate. 

The Forest of Arden 



The 



The remains of a large tract of forest which formerly stretched away 
from Stratford on the west and north. 

Charlecote House from the Avon 

The Road to Hampton Lucy . 

The " Bank where the Wild Thyme blows " .... 

This bank is not far from Shottery, and is the only place near Strat- 
ford where the wild thyme is found. 

The Path to Shottery 

Kissing-gate in foreground. 

The Boar at Charlecote Gate ....... 



PAGE 

25 
31 

34 

35 

37 
38 

43 

45 
48 

50 

54 
57 

58 

60 
63 



65 

67 
70 

73 

79 
81 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

PAGE 

Charlecote 83 

As it appeared in the year 1722. 

Sir T. Lucy 84 

Monument in Charlecote Church. 

Anne Hathaway's Cottage . 86 

The living-room : Mrs. Baker, the custodian, who died in 1899, a 
member of the Hathaway family, by the fireplace. 

A View of Warwick in Shakespeare's Time . . . . 89 

From an old print: S. John's — S.Nicolas' Church — The Castle — 
S. Maria's Church — The Priorye and Grove — " The prospect of War- 
wick from Coventre roade on the Northeast part of the Towne." 

The Crown Inn, Oxford 92 

From an old print. Where, according to tradition, Shakespeare 
lodged on his way to London. This inn has entirely disappeared. 

The Zoust Portrait of William Shakespeare .... 94 

Now in the possession of Sir John Lister-Kaye, the Grange, Wakefield. 

Old London Bridge 99 

From an old print. 

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester 107 

From a contemporary crayon sketch. 

The Bankside, Southwark, showing the Globe Theatre . . . 109 
From Visscher's " View of London," drawn in 1616. 

The Globe Theatre, Southwark 115 

From a drawing in the illustrated edition of Pennant's " London," in 
the British Museum. 

The Bear-baiting Garden . . . . . . . -117 

This stood near the Globe Theatre, Bankside. 

The Bankside, Southwark, showing the Swan Theatre . .127 

From Visscher's " View of London," drawn in 1616. 

The " Black Bust " of Shakespeare 123 

From a plaster cast of the original terra-cotta bust owned by the 
Garrick Club, L. 

Queen Elizabeth enthroned .129 

From a rare old print. 

William Shakespeare 135 

The J. Q. A. Ward statue, which stands at the entrance to the Mall, 
Central Park, New York, 



Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Sir Philip Sidney 139 

Engraving from the original of Sir Anthony More. 
The Droeshout Portrait of William Shakespeare . . . .150 
At present in the Memorial Picture Gallery at Stratford. 

The Tower of London, about the Middle of the Sixteenth 

Century 153 

From an old print. 
Sir Francis Drake 158 

From the picture belonging to J. A. Hope, Esq. 
Sir Walter Raleigh .162 

Engraving from the original by Zucchero. 
Thomas Nashe 169 

From an early pen drawing. 

William Shakespeare . . . . . . . * > ^7^ 

The statue on the Gower Memorial, Stratford. 
Michael Drayton . . . . . . . . . .179 

From an old and rare pen drawing. 

Edmund Spenser 182 

William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. Prime Minister of Queen Elizabeth . 185 

From the original painting at Hatfield House. 
Old Palace, Whitehall 191 

From a print engraved for Lambert's " History of London." 
London in 1543 ig8, 199 

From Westminster to Bishopsgate and Leadenhall. 
London in 1543 .......... 200 

From the Tower to Greenwich Palace. This and the preceding illus- 
trations are after an old print in the Bodleian Library. 

William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Shakespeare's Friend and 

Patron 213 

From an engraving by T. Jenkins, after the original of Van Dyke, in 
the collection of the Earl of Pembroke. 

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton ..... 223 

From an engraving by R. Cooper, after the original of Mirevelt, in the 
collection of the Duke of Bedford. 

George Chapman 226 

From an old print. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

PACE 

John Fletcher 231 

From a picture in the possession of tlie Earl of Clarendon. 

Warwick from the London Road 236 

S. Peter's Chapel — The Castle Garden — The Mount— S. Marie's 
Church — The Castle — The Priorye — S. Nicholas' Church. 

Francis Beaumont ......... 240 

From a picture in the possession of Colonel Harcourt. 

Seal of the Royal Dramatic College 244 

Garden of Dr. John Hall's House 249 

Greenwich Palace 261 

The Hall of the Middle Temple 269 

Where " Twelfth Night " was played. 
The Shakespeare Monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford . 272 

Ben Jonson ........... 278 

From a picture in the possession of Mr. Knight. 

Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex ...... 285 

After the original of Walker in the collection of the Marquis of Stafford. 

The American Fountain and Clock-tower, Stratford . . . 291 

Middle Temple Lane 294 

Queen Elizabeth 300 

From an old print. 
Kenilworth Castle ......... 305 

From an old print, " From the old parke on the South side thereof." 

Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam . . . . . . .312 

From a print by I. Houbraken, 1738. 

Wilton House . ......... 320 

Old Clopton Bridge 324 

The Hall at Clopton . . . 330 

James I. on Horseback 337 

From an old print. 
Henry, Prince of Wales, Son jf James I 343 

Kenilworth Castle 353 

From an old print, " The Prospect thereof upon the road from 
Coventre to Warwick." 



XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Kenilvvorth Castle 357 

From an old print, " The Prospect thereof upon Bull-hill neere the 
road from Colehiil towards Warwick." 

Holy Trinity Church from the Avon ...... 362 

From a photograph. 

The Guild Chapel Porch ........ 371 

Facsimile of the Title-page of the First Folio Edition of Shake- 
speare's "The Tempest" . . . . . . .381 

The Signature of William Shakespeare . . . . . 390 

The Dining-Hall at Clopton 393 

The Inscription over the Grave of William Shakespeare . 396, 397 

Inscription over the Grave of Shakespeare's Wife . . . 399 

Poets' Corner, Westminster ....... 403' 

Shakespeare's Death Record ........ 406 

Tailpiece 408 

From carving on the stalls of Holy Trinity Church. 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

POET, DRAMATIST, AND MAN 



William Shakespeare: 

POET, DRAMATIST, AND MAN 
CHAPTER I 

THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 

The history of the growth of the drama is one 
of the most fascinating chapters in the record of 
the spiritual Hfe of the race. So closely is it bound 
up with that life that the unfolding of this art 
appears, wherever one looks deeply into it, as a 
vital rather than a purely artistic process. That 
art has ever been conceived as the product of any- 
thing less rich and deep than an unfolding of life 
shows how far we have been separated by historic 
conditions from any first-hand contact with it, any 
deep-going and adequate conception of what it is, 
and what it means in the life of the race. It re- 
quires a great effort of the imagination to put our- 
selves into the attitude of those early men who had 
the passions and were doing the work of men, but 
who had the fresh and responsive imagination of 
childhood ; who were so closely in touch with 



2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

nature that the whole world was alive to them in 
every sight and sound. Personification was not 
only natural but inevitable to a race whose imagina- 
tion was far in advance of its knowledge. Such a 
race would first create and then devoutly believe 
the story of Dionysus : the wandering god, master 
of all the resources of vitality ; buoyant, enthrall- 
ing, mysterious, intoxicating ; in whom the rising 
passion, the deep instinct for freedom, which the 
spring let loose in every imagination, found visible 
embodiment; the personification of the ebbing and 
rising tide of life in Nature, and, therefore, the 
symbol of the spontaneous and inspirational ele- 
ment in life ; the personification of the mysterious 
force of reproduction, and therefore the symbol of 
passion and license. 

The god was entirely real ; everybody knew that 
a group of Tyrrhenian sailors had seized him as 
he sat on a rock on the seashore, bound him with 
withes, and carried him to the deck of their tiny 
piratical craft ; and everybody knew also that the 
withes had fallen from him, that streams of wine 
ran over the ship, vines climbed the mast and hung 
from the yards, garlands were twined about the 
oars, and a fragrance as of vineyards was breathed 
over the sea. Then suddenly a lion stood among 
the sailors, who sprang overboard and were changed 
into dolphins ; while the god, taking on his natural 
form, ran the ship into port. Such a being, appeal- 
ing alike to the imagination and the passions, per- 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 3 

sonifying the most beautiful mysteries and giving 
form to the wildest longings of the body and the 
mind, could not be worshipped save by rites and 
ceremonies which were essentially dramatic. 

The seed-time and harvest festivals furnished 
natural occasions for such a worship ; the wor- 
shippers often wore goatskins to counterfeit the 
Satyrs, and so gave tragedy its name. Grouped 
about rude altars, in a rude chorus, they told the 
story of the god's wanderings and adventures, not 
with words only, but with gesture, dance, and 
music. The expression of thought and feeling was 
free from self-consciousness, and was like a mirror 
of the emotions of the worshipper. This ballad- 
dance, which Mr. Moulton describes as a kind of 
literary protoplasm because several literary forms 
were implicit in it and were later developed out of 
it, was a free, spontaneous, natural act of worship ; 
it was also a genuine drama, which unfolded by 
easy gradations into a noble literary form. The 
frequent repetition of the story threw its dramatic 
element into more striking relief : the narrative 
gradually detached itself from the choral parts and 
fell to individual singers ; these singers separated 
themselves from the chorus and gave their parts 
increasing dramatic quality and distinctness ; until, 
by a process of rude and almost unconscious evolu- 
tion, the story was acted instead of narrated, and 
the dramatic poet, when he arrived, found all the 
materials for a complete drama ready to his hand. It 



4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

is sober history, therefore, and not figurative speech,, 
that the drama was born at the foot of the altar. 

And more than eighteen hundred years later the 
drama was born again at the foot of the altar. 
Whatever invisible streams of tradition may have 
flowed from the days of a declining theatre at 
Rome through the confused and largely recordless 
life of the early Middle Ages, it may safely be 
assumed that the modern drama began, as the 
ancient drama had begun, in the development of 
worship along dramatic lines. In the history of 
fairy tales and folk-lore, the explanation of striking 
similarities between the old and the new is to be 
sought, probably, in the laws of the mind rather 
than in the direct transmission of forms or mate- 
rials. When spiritual and intellectual conditions 
are repeated, the action or expression of the mind 
affected by them is likely to be repeated. In 
every age men of a certain temperament drama- 
tize their own experience whenever they essay to 
describe it, and dramatize whatever material comes 
to their hand for the purpose of entertaining 
others. The instinct which prompts men of this 
temper to make a story of every happening by 
selecting the most striking incidents, rearranging 
them, and heightening the effect by skilful group- 
ing, has made some kind of drama inevitable in 
every age. When the influence of Menander, 
modified and adapted to Roman taste by Terence, 
Plautus, and their successors, was exhausted, farces, 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 



5 



with music, pantomime, and humorous dialogue, 
largely improvised, met the general need with the 
coarse fun which suited a time of declining taste 
and decaying culture. The indecency and vulgar- 
ity of these purely popular shows became more 
pronounced as the Roman populace sank in intelli- 
gence and virtue ; the vigour which redeemed in 
part their early license gave place to the grossest 
personalities and the cheapest tricks and feats of 
skill. 

The mimes, or players, carried this degenerate 
drama into the provinces, where taste was even less 
exacting than in Rome, and the half-heathen world 
was entertained by cheap imitations of the worst 
amusements of the Capital. At a still later date, 
in market-places, on village greens, in castle yards, 
and even at Courts, strolling players recited, pos- 
tured, sang, danced, played musical instruments, 
and broke up the monotony of life at a time when 
means of communication were few, slow, and expen- 
sive. It is difficult for modern men to realize in 
imagination the isolation of small communities and 
of great castles in the Middle Ages. The stroll- 
ing player was welcome, not only because he was 
entertaining, but because he brought the air of the 
remote world with him. 

The vulgarity and indecency of shows of such an 
origin, everywhere adapting themselves to popular 
taste at a time when popular taste was coarse to the 
last degree, were inevitable. Then, as now, society 



6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

had the kind of entertainment for which it asked ; 
then, as now, the players were bent on pleasing the 
people. The Church, having other ends in view, 
tried to purify the general taste by purifying the 
amusements of the people, and in the fifth century 
the players of various kinds — mimes, histriones, 
joculatores — were put under formal ecclesiastical 
condemnation. The Church not only condemned 
the players ; she excluded them from her sacraments. 

The players continued to perform in the face of 
ecclesiastical disapproval, and they found audiences ; 
for the dramatic instinct lies deep in men, and the 
only way to shut out vulgar and indecent plays is to 
replace them by plays of a better quality. The play 
persists, and cannot be successfully banned. This 
degenerate practice of a once noble art came into 
England after the Norman Conquest, and the play- 
ers became, not only the entertainers of the people, 
but the story-tellers and reporters of the period. 
They made the monotony of life more bearable. 

How much indirect influence this humble and 
turbid stream of dramatic activity may have had on 
the development of the English drama cannot be 
determined ; the chief influence in the making of 
that drama came from the Church. The Church 
condemned the manifestation of the dramatic in- 
stinct, but it did not fall into the later error of con- 
demning the instinct itself ; on the contrary, it was 
quick to recognize and utilize that instinct. It had 
long appealed to the dramatic instinct in its wor 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 7 

shippers ; for the Mass is a dramatization of certain 
fundamental ideas generally held throughout Chris- 
tendom for many centuries. From the sixth century 
the Mass was the supreme act of worship through- 
out Western Europe. " In the wide dimensions 
which in course of time the Mass assumed," says 
Hagenbach, " there lies a grand, we are almost 
inclined to say an artistic, idea. A dramatic pro- 
gression is perceptible in all the symbolic processes, 
from the appearance of the celebrant priest at the 
altar and the confession of sins, to the Kyrie Elei- 
son, and from this to the grand doxology, after which 
the priest turns with the Dominus vobiscum to the 
congregation, calling upon it to pray. Next, we 
listen to the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. 
Between the two actions or acts intervenes the 
Graduate (a chant), during which the deacon as- 
cends the lectorium. With the Halleluia con- 
cludes the first act; and then ensues the Mass in a 
more special sense, which begins with the recitation 
of the Creed. Then again a Dominus vobiscum 
and a prayer, followed by the offertory and, accom- 
panied by the further ceremonies, the Consecration. 
The change of substance — the mystery of myste- 
ries — takes place amid the adoration of the congre- 
gation and the prayer for the quick and the dead ; 
then, after the touching chant of the Agnus Dei, 
ensues the Communion itself, which is succeeded 
by prayer and thanksgiving, the salutation of peace, 
and the benediction." 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



In the impressive and beautiful liturgy of the 
Mass the dramatization of the central mystery of 
the Christian faith was effected by action, by pan- 




A MYSTERY PLAY IN YORK CATHEDRAL. 

tomime, and by music. There was no purpose to 
be dramatic ; there was a natural evolution of the 
instinct to set forth a truth too great and mysterious 
to be contained in words by symbols, which are not 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE g 

only more inclusive than words but which satisfy 
the imagination, and by action. 

The Church did not stop with a dramatic pres- 
entation of the sublimest of dramatic episodes, the 
vicarious death of Christ ; it went further and set 
forth the fact and the truth of certain striking and 
significant scenes in the New Testament. As 
early as the fifth century these scenes were repro- 
duced in the churches in living pictures, with 
music. In this manner the people not only heard 
the story of the Adoration of the Magi and of the 
Marriage of Cana, but saw the story in tableaux. 
In course of time the persons in these tableaux 
spoke and moved, and then it was but a logical step 
to the representation dramatically, by the priests 
before the altar, of the striking or significant events 
in the life of Christ. 

Worshippers were approached through every 
avenue of expression : the churches in which they 
sat were nobly symbolical in structure ; the win- 
dows were ablaze with Scriptural story ; altar-pieces, 
statues, carvings, and pictures continually spoke to 
them in a language of searching beauty. In some 
churches the priests read from rolls upon which, as 
they were unfolded toward the congregation, pic- 
ture after picture came to view. Christmas, Good 
Friday, and Easter services inevitably took on dra- 
matic forms, and became beautiful in their reproduc- 
tion of the touchinq- and tender scenes in the life of 
Christ, and grewsome in their literal picturing of 



lO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

his sufferings and death. The dramatic instinct 
had been long at work in the development of wor- 
ship ; a play on the Passion, ascribed to Gregory of 
Nazianzen, dated back to the fourth century. This 
early drama was a succession of monologues, but it 
plainly predicted the mystery drama of the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries. 

There was nothing forced or artificial in the 
growth of this later and more complete drama ; a 
description of a Durham Good Friday service 
makes us see the easy progression toward well- 
defined drama : " Within the church of Durham, 
upon Good Friday, there was a marvellous solemn 
service, in which service time, after the Passion was 
sung, two of the eldest monks took a goodly large 
crucifix all of gold, of the semblance of our Saviour 
Christ, nailed upon the Cross. . . . The service 
being ended, the said two monks carried the Cross 
to the Sepulchre with great reverence (v/hich Sepul- 
chre was set up that morning on the north side of 
the choir, nigh unto the High Altar, before the 
service time), and then did lay it within the said 
Sepulchre with great devotion." 

It is easy to follow the dramatic development of 
such a theme, and to understand how beautiful and 
impressive worship became when the divine tragedy 
was not only sung and described, but acted before 
the high altar by gorgeously robed priests. Thus 
the drama was born a second time at the foot of the 
altar. 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE n 

But the time came when the drama parted com- 
pany with the liturgy, and, as in its development in 
Greece, took on a life of its own. The vernacular 
was substituted for Latin ; laymen took parts of 
increasing importance ; the place of representation 
was changed from the church to the space outside 
the church ; the liturgical yielded to the dramatic ; 
humour, and even broad farce, were introduced ; 
the several streams of dramatic tradition which had 
come down from an earlier time were merged in 
the fully developed Mystery or Miracle play. 

The trade guilds had become centres of organ- 
ized enterprise in the towns, and the presentation of 
plays, in which popular religious and social interest 
was now concentrated, fell into their hands. Cities 
like York, Chester, and Coventry fostered the grow- 
ing art with enthusiasm and generosity. By the 
beginning of the fifteenth century the presentation 
of the dramas was thoroughly systematized. In 
some places the Mayor, by proclamation, announced 
the dates of presentation ; in other places special 
messengers or heralds made the round of the city 
and gave public notice. The different guilds 
undertook the presentation of different acts or 
scenes. Two-story wagons took the place of the 
stage in front of the church or in the square ; on 
these wagons, or pageants, as they were called, the 
rude dressing-rooms were on the lower and the 
stage on the upper story. These movable theatres, 
starting from the church, passed through all the 



12 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



principal streets, and, at important points, the actors 
went through their parts in the presence of throngs 
of eager spectators in the windows, galleries, door- 
ways, squares, and upon temporary scaffolds. The 
plays were in series and required several days for 
presentation, and the town made the occasion one 
of general and hilarious holiday. 




PAGEANTS ON WHICH WERE GIVEN MIRACLE PLAYS. 

On the pageants, handsomely decorated, the 
spectators saw scenes acted, with which they had 
been made familiar by every kind of teaching. The 
drama in the Garden of Eden was presented with 
uncompromising realism, Adam and Eve appear- 
ing in appropriate attire ; the devil played a great 
and effective part, furnishing endless amusement 
by his buffoonery, but always going in the end to 
his own place. Pilate and Herod divided popular 
attention by their semi-humorous or melodramatic 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 13 

roles, and Noah's wife afforded an opportunity for 
the play of monotonous and very obvious masculine 
wit on the faults and frailty of woman. The con- 
struction of these semi-sacred dramas, dealing with 
high or picturesque events and incidents in Biblical 
story, was rude ; the mixture of the sacred and the 
comic so complete that the two are constantly 
merged; the frankness of speech and the grossness 
almost incredible to modern taste. It would be a 
great mistake, however, to interpret either the inter- 
mingling of the tragic and the comic or the gross- 
ness of speech as indicating general corruption ; 
they indicate an undeveloped rather than a cor- 
rupt society. The English people were morally 
sound, but they were coarse in habit and speech, 
after the manner of the time. There was as much 
honest and sober living as to-day; the grossness 
was not a matter of character, but of expression. 
Men and women saw, without any consciousness 
of irreverence or incongruity, the figure of Deity 
enthroned on a movable stage, with Cherubim 
gathered about Him, creating the world with the 
aid of images of birds and beasts, with branches 
plucked from trees, and with lanterns such as were 
carried about the streets at niorht. 

Religion was not a department or partial expres- 
sion of life ; it was inclusive of the whole rang-e of 
feeling and action. It embraced humour as readily 
as it embraced the most serious conviction and the 
most elevated emotion. It was, therefore, entirely 



14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

congruous with the deepest piety of the time that 
grotesque figures, monstrous gargoyles, broadly 
humorous carvings on miserere stalls, should be 
part of the structure of those vast cathedrals 
which are the most sublime expressions in art of 
the religious life of the race. To read into the 
grossness and indecency of expression in the 
fifteenth century the moral significance which such 
an expression would have in the nineteenth century 
is not only to do a grave injustice to many genera- 
tions, but to betray the lack of a sound historic 
sense. The great dramatists who followed these 
early unknown playwrights understood that the 
humorous cannot be separated from the tragic 
without violating the facts of life ; and religion, in 
its later expressions, would have been saved from 
many absurdities and much destructive narrowness 
if the men who spoke for it had not so strangely 
misunderstood and rejected one of the greatest 
qualities of the human spirit — that quality of 
humour which, above all others, keeps human 
nature sane and sound. 

To the Mysteries and Miracle plays succeeded 
the Moralities. Whether these later and less 
dramatic plays were developed out of the earlier 
dramatic forms is uncertain ; that they were largely 
modelled along lines already well defined is appar- 
ently well established. No line of sharp division 
as regards time, theme, or manner can be drawn 
between the two; although certain broad differ- 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 15 

ences are evident at a glance. The mediaeval mind 
dealt largely with types, and only secondarily with 
individuals ; and the break in the slow and uncon- 
scious progression from the type to the sharply 
defined person, which registers the unfolding not 
only of the modern mind but of modern art, is not 
inexplicable. The characters in the Mysteries and 
Miracle plays were received directly or indirectly 
from Biblical sources ; in the Moralities there was, 
apparently, an attempt to create new figures. These 
figures were more abstract and far less human than 
their immediate predecessors in the pageants, but 
they may have had the value of a halting and 
uncertain attempt to create instead of reproduce. 
The first result was, apparently, a retrogression 
from the dramatic idea: the earlier plays had 
shown some skill in the development of charac- 
ter; in the Moralities the stage was surrendered 
to the personifications of abstract virtues. In place 
of a very real Devil, revelling in grotesque humour, 
and an equally real Herod, who gave free play to 
the melodramatic element so dear to the unculti- 
vated in every age, appeared those verytenuous and 
shadowy abstractions, the World, the Flesh, the 
Devil, not as actors in the w^orld's tragedy, but as 
personifications of the principle of evil ; with Genus 
Humanum, Pleasure, Slander, Perseverance, and 
the Seven Deadly Sins. These prolix and monot- 
onous plays cover a wide range of subjects, from 
the popular " Everyman," which deals, not without 



i6 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



dignity, with the supreme experience of death, to 
" Wyt and Science," which doubtless, on many a 
school stage, set forth the charms of knowledge, and 
presented one of the earliest pleas for athletics. 

The Moralities beguiled the darkest period in the 
literary history of England ; the tide of the first 
dramatic energy had gone out, the tide of the second 




FOUR MORALITY PLAYERS. 



Contemplation, Perseverance, Imagination, and Free Will. — From a black-letter copy of 
the Morality " Hycke-Scorner." 

and greater dramatic movement had not set in. 
There were freedom, spontaneity, fresh feeling, 
poetic imagery, in the ballads ; but the Moralities 
were mechanical, rigid, laboured, and uninspired. 

The Moralities marked, however, one important 
step in the development of the English drama : they 
created opportunities for professional actors, and 
made acting as a profession possible. The earlier 
plays had been in the hands of amateurs ; men who 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 17 

had, in many cases, considerable skill in acting, but 
who were members of guilds, with other and differ- 
ent occupations. Side by side with the Mystery 
and Miracle plays there had percolated through the 
long period when the English drama was in the 
making many kinds of shows, more or less coarse 
and full of buffoonery, in the hands of roving 
pantomimists, singers, comedians — a class without 
habitation, standing, or character. These wander- 
ing performers, many of them doubtless men of 
genuine gifts cast upon an unpropitious time, found 
place at this period in companies supported by 
noblemen and attached to great houses, or in com- 
panies which presented plays in various parts of the 
country in the courts of inns and, on great occa- 
sions, in large towns and cities. For all classes 
dearly loved the bravery, excitement, and diversion 
of the pageant, the masque, and the play of every 
kind. The parts were entirely in the hands of 
men ; no woman appeared on the stage until after 
the time of Shakespeare ; the female characters 
were taken by boys. 

The transition from the Moralities to the fully 
developed play was gradual, and was not marked by 
logical gradations. The tendency to allegory gave 
place slowly to the tendency to character-drawing, 
to the unfolding of a story, and to the humour and 
liveliness of the comedy. One of the earliest forms 
which comedy took was the Interlude — a transi- 
tional dramatic form with which the name of John 



1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Heywood is identified. A London boy, believed to 
have sung for a time in the choir of the Chapel 
Royal, Heywood studied at Oxford, was befriended 
by that great Englishman, Sir Thomas More, and 
early became attached to the Court of Henry the 
Eighth as a player. Players were still under social 
and religious interdict, but Heywood's sincerity as a 
Catholic withstood the test of the withdrawal of the 
royal favour at a time when a king's smile was for- 
tune in a most tangible form. There was a manly 
integrity in the nature of John Heywood, as in that 
of many of his fellow-actors. The Interlude in his 
hands was less ambitious in construction than a 
play; shorter, more vivacious, and much closer to 
the life of the time. It was often rude, but it was 
oftener racy, direct, and effective in expression ; 
using the familiar colloquial speech of the day with 
great effectiveness. The interest turned on a hu- 
morous situation, and the dialogue was enlivened 
by the play of shrewd native wit. In the " Four P's " 
the characters were so well known that the audience 
hardly needed the stimulus of wit to awaken its 
interest. The Palmer, the Poticary, the Pedlar, and 
the Pardoner brought the playwright and his audi- 
tors into easy and immediate contact, and furnished 
ample opportunity to satirize or ridicule the vices, 
hypocrisies, and follies of the time. The structure 
of the Interlude was simple, and its wit not too fine 
for the coarse taste of the time ; but it was a true 
growth of the English soil, free from foreign influ- 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 19 

ence ; the virility, the gayety, and the license of the 
early English spirit were in it. 

" Ralph Roister Doister," the earliest comedy, 
was produced not later than 1550 — perhaps 
twenty years after the production of the " Four 
P's." Heywood had shown how to set character in 
distinct outlines on the stage ; Nicholas Udall, an 
Oxford student, a scholar, holding the head-master- 
ship first of Eton College and later of Westminster 
School, brought the comedy to completeness by 
adding to the interest of characters essentially 
humorous the more absorbing interest of a well- 
defined plot. Udall was a schoolmaster, but there 
was no pedantry in him ; he felt the deep classical 
influence which had swept Europe like a tide, but 
he took his materials from the life about him, and 
he used good native speech. He had learned from 
the Latin comedy how to construct both a plot and 
a play, and his training gave him easy mastery of 
sound expression ; but he composed his comedies 
in terms of English life. " Roister Doister " was 
a type of man instantly recognized by an English 
audience of every social grade ; a coward who was 
also a boaster, whose wooing, like that of Falstaff, 
affords ample opportunity for the same rollicking 
fun. The significance of the piece lay in its fresh- 
ness, its freedom, and its ease — qualities which 
were prophetic of the birth of a true drama. 

" Gammer Gurton's Needle," a broad, coarse, but 
effective picture of rustic manners, generally be- 



20 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



lieved to have been written by John Still, a Lin- 
colnshire man by birth, a Cambridge man by 
education, and a Bishop by vocation, marks the 
first appearance of the fully developed farce in 
English, and is notable for vigorous characteriza- 
tion in a mass of vulgar buffoonery. That such 
a piece should come from the hand of the stern 
divine, with Puritan aspect, who lies at rest in 




THE TALBOT INN- — CHAUCER'S "TABARD." 
Where the early players often raised their rude stage. 

Wells Cathedral, and that it was performed before 
a college audience in Cambridge, shows that the 
social and intellectual conditions which permitted 
so close a juxtaposition of the sacred and the vul- 
gar in the Mystery and Miracle plays still prevailed. 
The saving grace of this early dramatic writing was 
its vitality; in this, and in its native flavour and its 
resistance to foreign influence, lay its promise. 



THE FORERUNiNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 21 

The earlier development of comedy as compared 
with tragedy is not difficult to account for. Trag- 
edy exacts something from an audience ; a certain 
degree of seriousness or of culture must be pos- 
sessed by those who are to enjoy or profit by it. 
Comedy, on the other hand, appeals to the un- 
trained no less than the trained man ; it collects 
its audience at the village blacksmith's or the coun- 
try shop as readily as in the most amply appointed 
theatre. Moreover, it kept close to popular life 
and taste at a time when the influence of the classi- 
cal literatures was putting its impress on men of 
taste and culture. Italy, by virtue of its immense 
service in the recovery of classical thought and art, 
and in the production of great works of its own in 
literature, painting, sculpture, and architecture, was 
the teacher of western Europe ; and such was the 
splendour of her achievements that what ought to 
have been a liberating and inspiring influence 
became a danger to native originality and develop- 
ment, Italian literature came into Eno-land like a 
flood, and, through a host of translations, some of 
which were of masterly quality, the intellectual in- 
equality of a difference of more than two centuries 
in culture was equalized with astonishing rapidity. 
In that age of keen appetite for knowledge, the art 
and scholarship of a more mature people were as- 
similated with almost magical ease. The traditions 
of the classical stage for a time threatened the 
integrity of English art, but in the end the vigour 



22 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the English mind asserted itself ; if the classical 
influence had won the day, Ben Jonson would have 
secured a higher place, but Shakespeare might have 
been fatally handicapped. 

" Ferrex and Porrex," or, as the play is more gen- 
erally known, " Gorbordoc," was the earliest English 
tragedy, and is chiefly interesting as showing how 
the influence of Seneca and the sturdy vigour of the 
English genius worked together in a kind of rude 
harmony. The manner shows the Latin influence, 
but the story and the spirit in which it is treated are 
genuinely English. Sir Philip Sidney, whose cul- 
ture was of the best in point of quality, found " Gor- 
bordoc " full of " stately speeches and well-sounding 
phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style," 
but notes the failure to comply with the traditional 
unity of time. Sackville, one of the authors of this 
vigorous play, stood in relations of intimacy with 
the Court of Elizabeth, became Chancellor of the 
University of Oxford, and Lord High Treasurer of 
England. His work in " The Mirrour of Magis- 
trates " brings out still more clearly the deep seri- 
ousness of his spirit. Norton, who collaborated 
with him in the writing of " Gorbordoc," was a man 
of severe temper, a translator of Calvin's Institutes, 
and a born reformer. Such men might be affected 
by the classical influence; they could hardly be 
subdued by it. In the excess of action, the rush of 
incident, the swift accumulation of horrors, which 
characterize this sanguinary play, Seneca would 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 



23 



have found few suggestions of his own methods and 
temper. The blank verse in which it is written, 
however, came ultimately from Italy through the 
skilful adaptation of Surrey. 

The integrity of the English drama was assured 
when the playwrights, now rapidly increasing in 
numbers, turned to English history and produced 
the long series of Chronicle plays, to which Shake- 
speare owed so much, and which furnished an inac- 
curate but liberalizing education for the whole body 
of the English people. In these plays, probably cov- 
ering the entire field of English history, the doings 
and the experiences of the English race were set 
forth in the most vital fashion ; English history dra- 
matically presented became a connected and living 
story. They developed the race consciousness, 
deepened the race feeling, made love of country the 
passion which found splendid expression in " Henry 
v.," and prepared the way for the popular appre- 
ciation of the noblest dramatic works. This dra- 
matic use of national history made the drama the 
natural and inevitable expression of the English 
spirit in Elizabeth's time, and insured an art which 
was not only intensely English but intensely alive. 
The imagination trained by the Chronicle plays was 
ready to understand " Hamlet " and " Lear." 

Bale's " King Johan," " The True Tragedy of 
Richard III.," "The Famous Victories of Henry 
v.," " The Contention of the Two Famous Houses 
of York and Lancaster," " Edward III.," and kin- 



24 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

dred plays, not only furnished material for Shake- 
speare's hand, but prepared Shakespeare's audiences 
to understand his work. These plays practically 
cover a period of four centuries, and bring the story 
of English history down to the Armada. 

In close historical connection with the Chronicle 
plays must be placed the long list of plays which, 
like "Cardinal Wolsey," "Duchess of Norfolk," 
" Duke Humphrey," and " Hotspur," drew upon the 
treasury of English biography and dramatized in- 
dividual vicissitude and fate ; and the plays which, 
like the " Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington," 
developed the dramatic uses of legendary history. 
It would not be easy to devise a more stimulating 
method of educating the imagination and prepar- 
ing the way for a period of free and buoyant 
creativeness than this visualization of history on 
the rude but intensely vitalized stage of the six- 
teenth century. 

One more step in this vital expression of the 
English spirit was taken by Shakespeare's immedi- 
ate predecessors and by some of his older contem- 
poraries. Such a play as "Arden of Feversham," 
which has been credited to Shakespeare by a 
number of critics, brought the dramatic form to a 
stage where it needed but the hand of a poet of 
genius to perfect it. There was still a long dis- 
tance between the plays of this period, however, 
and the balance, harmony, and restraint of Shake- 
speare. " Arden of Feversham," and a host of 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 



25 



dramas of the same period, are charged with power; 
but he who reads them is fed with horrors. Lyly's 
comedies were acted, with one or two exceptions, 
before Queen Elizabeth, and were mainly, as Mr. 
Symonds suggests, elaborately decorated censers 
in which incense was lavishly burned to a Queen 
incredibly avid of adulation and flattery. As a 




THE GLOBE THEATRE. 

writer of comedies for the Court, the author of 
" Euphues " influenced the language of the later 
dramatists far more deeply than he influenced the 
drama itself. He made an art of witty dialogue, 
and repartee became in his hands a brilliant fence 
of words ; it remained for Shakespeare to carry 
both to perfection in " Much Ado About Nothing." 



26 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

When Shakespeare reached London about 1586, 
he found the art of play-writing in the hands of a 
group of men of immense force of imagination and 
of singularly varied gifts of expression. During the 
decade in which he was serving his apprenticeship 
to his art England lost Peele, Kyd, Greene, and 
Marlowe ; Lodge, having become a physician, died 
in 1625. Every member of this group, with the 
exception of Marlowe, was born to good conditions ; 
they were gentlemen in position, and scholars by 
virtue of university training. They were careless 
and, in some cases, violent and criminal livers; men 
born out of due time, so far as adjustment between 
genius and sound conditions was concerned; or 
committed by temperament to unbalanced, dis- 
orderly, and tragical careers. Greene, after a life 
of dissipation, died in extreme misery of mind 
and body ; Peele involved himself in many kinds 
of misfortune, and became the victim of his vices ; 
Nash lived long enough to lament the waste and 
confusion of his career; and the splendid genius 
of Marlowe was quenched before he had reached 
his thirtieth year. He who would pass a sweeping 
and unqualified condemnation on this fatally en- 
dowed group of ardent young writers would do 
well to study the times in which they lived, the 
attitude of society towards the playwright, the 
absence of normal conditions for the expression of 
genius such as they possessed, and the perilous 
combination of temperament and imagination which 



THE FORERUNNERS OF SHAKESPEARE 27 

seems to have been made in each. It is futile and 
immoral to conceal or minimize the faults and 
vices of men of genius ; but it is equally futile 
and immoral to attempt to determine in any indi- 
vidual career the degree of moral responsibility. 

Greene was a born story-teller, without having 
any marked gift for the construction of strong and 
well-elaborated plots ; his study of character was 
neither vigorous nor convincing. Nash was, on 
the other hand, a born satirist, with a coarse but 
very effective method and a humour often grotesque 
but always virile. Peele was preeminently a poet 
of taste, with a gift for graceful and even elegant 
expression, a touch of tenderness, and a sensitive- 
ness of imagination which showed itself in his 
use of the imagery of mythology. Lodge wrote 
dull plays and lightened them by the introduction 
of charming songs. 

Marlowe was the creative spirit of this group of 
accomplished playwrights. The son of a Canter- 
bury shoemaker, he took his Bachelor's degree at 
Cambridge, and arrived in London, " a boy in years, 
a man in genius, a god in ambition." His ardent 
nature, impatient of all restraint and full of Titanic 
impulses, found congenial society on the stage and 
congenial work in play-writing. His life was as 
passionate and lawless as his art; his plays were 
written in six turbulent years, and his career was 
one of brief but concentrated energy. The two 
parts of " Tamburlaine," " The Massacre at Paris," 



28 WILLIAM shakp:speare 

"The Jew of Malta," "Edward II.," and " Dn 
Faustus," the glowing fragment of " Hero and 
Leander," and a few short compositions, among 
them the exquisite " Come live with me and be 
my love," evidence the depth and splendour of Mar- 
lowe's genius and the lack of balance and restraint 
in his art. He gave English tragedy sublimity, 
intensity, breadth, and order; he freed blank verse 
from rigidity and mechanical correctness, and gave 
it the freedom, harmony, variety of cadence, and 
compelling music which imposed it upon all later 
English tragedy. Neither in his life nor in his art 
did Marlowe accept the inevitable limitations of 
human power in action and in creation ; he flung 
himself passionately against the immovable barriers, 
and grasped at the impossible. But his failures 
were redeemed by superb successes. He breathed 
the breath of almost superhuman life into the Eng- 
lish drama both as regards its content and its form; 
for he was even greater as a poet than as a drama- 
tist: 

. . . his raptures were 
All air and fire . . . ; 
For that fine madness still he did retain 
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain. 

He left but a single step to be taken in the full 
unfolding of the drama, and that step Shakespeare 
took : the step from the Titan to the Olympian. 



CHAPTER 11 

BIRTH AND BREEDING 

The charm of Stratford-on-Avon is twofold ; it 
is enfolded by some of the loveliest and most char- 
acteristic English scenery, and it is the home of the 
greatest English literary tradition. Lying in the 
very heart of the country, it seems to be guarded 
as a place sacred to the memory of the foremost 
man of expression who has yet appeared among the 
English-speaking peoples. It has become a town 
of some magnitude, w^ith a prosperous trade in malt 
and corn ; but its importance is due wholly to the 
fact that it is the custodian of Shakespeare's birth- 
place, of the school in which he was trained, of the 
house in which he courted Anne Hathaway, of the 
ground on which he built his own home, and of 
the church in which he lies buried. The place is 
full of Shakespearean associations ; of localities 
which he knew in the years of his dawning intelli- 
gence, and in those later years when he returned 
to take his place as a householder and citizen ; the 
old churches with which as a child he was familiar 
are still standing, substantially as they stood at the 
end of the sixteenth century ; the grammar school 
still teaches the boys of to-day within the walls 

29 



30 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

that listened to the same recitations three hundred 
years ago ; the houses of his children and friends 
are, in several instances, still secure from the de- 
structive hand of time ; there are still wide stretches 
of sloping hillside shaded by the ancient Forest 
of Arden ; there are quaint half-timbered fronts 
upon which he must have looked ; the " bank where 
the wild thyme blows " is still to be found by those 
who know the foot-path to Shottery and the road 
over the hill ; the Warwickshire landscape has the 
same ripe and tender beauty which Shakespeare 
knew; and the Avon flows as in the days when he 
heard the nightingales singing in the level meadows 
across the river from the church, or slipped silently 
in his punt through the mist which softly veils it 
on summer nights. 

When Shakespeare was born, on April twenty- 
second or twenty-third, in the year fifteen hun- 
dred and sixty-four, Stratford was an insignificant 
hamlet, off the main highways of travel, although 
within reach of important towns like Coventry, 
and of stately old English homes like Warwick 
and Kenilworth castles. The streets were nar- 
row, irregular, and, like most streets in most 
towns in that unsanitary age, badly kept and 
of an evil odour; the houses were set among gar- 
dens or in the open, with picturesque indiffer- 
ence to modern ideas of community orderliness ; 
the black-oak structure showing curious designs of 
triangles and squares through the plaster. Thatched 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 



31 



roofs, projecting gables, rough walls, unpaved lanes, 
foot-paths through the fields, the long front of the 
Guild Hall with the Grammar School, the Guild 
Chapel, the Church of the Holy Trinity, the bridge 
across the Avon built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the 
time of Henry VH., made up the picture which 




AN EARLY DRAWING OF SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE. 

Shakespeare saw when he looked upon the place 
of his birth. On High Street, when he came back 
from London to live in Stratford, he found, not far 
from his house in New Place, the carved half-tim- 
bered front of the house in which tradition says the 
mother of John Harvard was born. 



32 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The population of Stratford is now about nine 
thousand; in 1564 it was probably less than fifteen 
hundred. It w^as surrounded by fields which were 
sometimes white with grain, and were always, in the 
season, touched with the splendour of the scarlet 
poppy. The villagers were sturdy English folk with 
more vigour than intelligence, and with more Capa- 
city than education. Many of them were unable to 
sign their own names, and among these John Shake- 
speare, the father of the poet, has sometimes been 
included: documents exist, however, which bear 
what is believed to be his signature. There was 
nothing unusual in this lack of literary training ; 
comparatively few Englishmen of the station of 
John Shakespeare had mastered, in that period, the 
art of writing. Men who could not sign their own 
names were often men of mark, substance, and 
ability. 

The family name was not uncommon in War- 
wickshire, and was borne by a good yeoman stock. 
When John Shakespeare applied, in 1596, for the 
right to use a coat of arms, he declared that Henry 
VII. had made a grant of lands to his grandfather 
in return for services of importance. The college 
of heraldry has been so prolific of fictitious geneal- 
ogies that this claim is open to suspicion ; what 
is certain is the substantial character of the poet's 
ancestors, their long residence in Warwickshire, 
and the fact that some of them were farmers, land- 
renters, and land-owners. The grandfather of the 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 33 

poet was probably Richard Shakespeare, a farmer 
who Hved within easy walking distance of Stratford. 
John Shakespeare removed to Stratford about the 
middle of the sixteenth century, and became a trader 
in all manner of farm produce. Then, as now, malt 
and corn were staple articles of commerce in Strat- 
ford ; John Shakespeare dealt in these and in wool, 
skins, meat, and leather. He has been called a 
glover and a butcher ; he was both, and had several 
other vocations besides. 

Henley Street was then one of the thoroughfares 
of Stratford, and got its name from the fact that 
it led to Henley-on-Avon, a market town of local 
importance. That John Shakespeare was an active 
man of affairs, with a keen instinct for bu&iness, if 
not with a sound judgment, is clear, not only from 
the variety and number of his business interests, 
but from the frequency of the suits for the recovery 
of small debts in which he appeared. His early 
ventures were successful, and he soon became a 
man of substance and influence. His prosperity 
was increased by his marriage, in 1557, to Mary 
Arden, the youngest daughter of a well-to-do farmer 
of Wilmcote, not far from Stratford. She brought 
her husband a house and fifty acres of land, some 
money, and other forms of property. During the 
year before his marriage John Shakespeare had 
purchased the house, with a garden, in Henley 
Street, which is now accepted as the birthplace of 
the poet. In the following year his growing influ- 



34 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ence was evidence! by his election as a tester of the 
quality of bread and of malt liquors. Various pub- 
lic duties were devolved upon him. He was elected 
a burgess or member of the town council ; he 
became a chamberlain of the borough ; and later 








4i ri^Ji^i ^:ev^ ^^ufrf>«. t23^' S.- j>^j^»>fU^ 



SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTH RECORD. 
The three crosses mark the line. 



was advanced to the highest position in the gift of 
the municipality, that of Bailiff. There were two 
daughters who died in infancy; then came the 
first son, William, who was christened, the parish 
register tells us, on the 26th day of April, 1564. 
The custom of the time with regard to the interval 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 



35 



between birth and baptism was so well settled that 
there seems no reason to doubt that the poet was 
born on the 2 2d or 23d of the month. There were 
then two detached houses standing in Henley 
Street where the present house now stands ; tradi- 
tion assigns the house to the west as the place of 
the poet's birth. This house finally came into the 
possession, by the bequest of the poet's grand- 
daughter, of the family of 
his sister Joan Hart, and 
until 1806 was occupied by 
them ; the adjoining house 
to the east was let as an inn. 
In 1846 both houses were 
secured for preservation, re- 
stored as far as possible to 
the condition in which they 
were in the poet's time, 
joined in a single structure, 
and made one of the most 
interesting museums in the 
world. In this 
there is every reason to be 
lieve that Shakespeare was born. The continued 
possession of the part which was once the western 
house by the poet's kinsfolk was probably the basis 
for a tradition which runs back for an indefinite 
period. 

The Birthplace, as it is called, is a cottage of plas- 
ter and timber, two stories in height, with dormer 




structure ^^^'^ '^ trinity church, where 

SHAKESPEARE WAS BAPTIZED. 



2,6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

windows, and a pleasant garden in the rear — all 
that remains of a considerable piece of land. It 
stands upon the street, and the visitor passes at 
once, through a little porch, into a low room, ceiled 
with black oak, paved with flags, and with a fire- 
place so wide that one sees at a glance what the 
chimney-corner once meant of comfort and cheer. 
On those seats, looking into the glowing fire, the 
imagination of a boy could hardly fail to kindle. 
A dark and narrow stair leads to the little bare 
room on the floor above in which Shakespeare w^as 
probably born. The place seems fitted, by its very 
simplicity, to serve as the starting-point for so 
great a career. There is a small fireplace ; the 
low ceiling is within reach of the hand ; on the nar- 
row panes of glass which fill the casement names 
and initials are traced in irregular profusion. This 
room has been a place eagerly sought by literary 
pilgrims since the beginning of the century. The 
low ceiling and the walls were covered, in the early 
part of the century, with innumerable autographs. 
In 1820 the occupant, a woman who attached great 
importance to the privilege of showing the house to 
visitors, was compelled to give up that privilege, 
and, by way of revenge, removed the furniture and 
whitewashed the walls of the house. A part of the 
wall of the upper room escaped the sacrilegious 
hand of the jealous custodian, and names running 
back to the third decade of the last century are 
still to be found there. Other and perhaps more 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 



37 



famous names have taken the places of those which 
were erased, and the walls are now a mass of hiero- 
glyphs. Scott, Byron, Rogers, Tennyson, Thack- 
eray, Dickens, have left this record of their interest 
in the room. No new names are now written on 
these blackened walls ; the names of visitors are 
kept in a record-book on the lower floor. 




THE ROOM IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN. 



In a small room behind the birth-room what is 
known as the Stratford portrait of the poet is 
shown. On the first floor, opening from the room 
into which the visitor enters, is a larger room in 
which are collected a number of very interesting- 
articles connected with the poet. There are to be 
seen the deed which conveyed the property to his 
father; the letter in which Richard Quiney, whose 



38 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



son Thomas married the poet's youngest daughter, 
Judith, in 1616, asked him for a loan of money; the 
seal ring on which the letters W. S. are engraved ; 
the desk which stood in the Grammar School three 
hundred years ago ; and many other curiosities, 
memorials, documents, and books which find proper 
place in such a museum. In the garden, sweet with 
the fragrant breath of summer, there are pansies 




N r//-i' f^-^n% 



■^ 'a 



A BIT OF THE WALL OF THE ROOM IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN. 

and violets, columbines and rosemary, daisies and 
rue — flowers which seem to belong to Shake- 
speare, since they bloom in the plays as if they first 
struck root in the rich soil of his imagination. This 
property, which remained continuously in the pos- 
session of Shakespeare's kin until the beginning of 
the present century, is now set apart forever, with 
the home of Anne Hathaway, the ground which the 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 39 

poet purchased in 1597, and where he built his own 
home, and the adjoining house, as memorials of the 
poet's life in Stratford. 

John Shakespeare prospered in private fortune 
and in public advancement for nearly a decade 
after the birth of the poet. His means were very- 
considerable for the time and place, and as Bailiff 
and chief Alderman he was the civic head of the 
community. An ingenious attempt has been made 
to prove that he was a man of Puritan temper and 
associations; but the fact that he applied for a grant 
of arms, and that as Bailiff he welcomed the actors 
of the Earl of Worcester's Company and the Queen's 
Company to Stratford in 1568, would seem to indi- 
cate that, whatever his religious convictions and 
ecclesiastical tendencies may have been, he did not 
share the fanatical temper of some of his con- 
temporaries. 

The child William, then four years old, may have 
seen these companies, bravely dressed, with banners 
flying, drums beating, and trumpeters sounding 
their ringing tones, riding over Clopton bridge and 
halting in the market-place where High and Bridge 
Streets intersect, and where the market, with its 
belfry and clock, now stands. The players of the 
day led a wandering life, full of vicissitude, but, in 
fair weather and a hospitable community, they 
brought with them a visible if sometimes shabby 
suggestion of the great London world, which made 
their occasional coming into a quiet town like Strat- 



40 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ford an unforgettable occurrence. The horses they 
rode were gayly caparisoned, the banners they 
carried were splendidly emblazoned with the arms 
of their patrons, their costumes were rich and 
varied, and they were accompanied by grooms and 
servants of all sorts. A goodly company they must 
have seemed to a child's imagination, with an air 
of easy opulence worn as a part of their vocation, 
but as purely imitative as the parts they played to 
crowds of open-mouthed rustics. Their magnifi- 
cence, however shabby, and their brave air, however 
swaggering, made rural England feel as if it had 
touched the great new world of adventure and fame 
and wealth, of w^hich stories were told in every 
chimney corner. 

To these companies of players Stratford appears 
to have given exceptional hospitality ; the people 
of the place were lovers of the drama. In the 
course of two decades the town enjoyed no less 
than twenty-four visits from strolling companies ; 
a fact of very obvious bearing on the education of 
Shakespeare's imagination and the bent of his mind 
toward a vocation. In such a community there 
must have been constant talk about plays and 
players, and easy familiarity with the resources and 
art of the actor. It follows, too, that the presence 
of so many players in the little village brought boys 
of an inquiring turn of mind into personal contact 
with the comedians and tragedians of the day. As 
a boy, Shakespeare came to know the old English 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 4 1 

plays which were the stock in trade of the travelling 
companies ; he learned the stage business, and he 
was undoubtedly on terms of familiarity with men 
of gift and art. For the purposes of his future 
work this education was far more stimulating and 
formative than any which he could have secured 
at Eton or Winchester during the same impres- 
sionable years. Scott's specific training for the 
writing of the Waverley novels and the narrative 
poems which bear his name was gained in his 
ardent reading and hearing of old Scotch ballads, 
romances, stories, and history, rather than in the 
lecture-rooms of the University of Edinburgh. 
Shakespeare has sometimes been represented as 
a boy of obscure parentage and vulgar surround- 
ings ; he was, as a matter of fact, the son of a man 
of energy and substance, the foremost citizen of 
Stratford. He has often been represented as wholly 
lacking educational opportunities; he was, as a mat- 
ter of fact, especially fortunate in educational oppor- 
tunities of the most fertilizing and stimulating kind. 
The singular misconception which has identified 
education exclusively with formal academic training 
has made it possible to hold men of the genius of 
Shakespeare, Burns, and Lincoln before the world 
as exceptions to the law that no art can be mastered 
save through a thorough educational process. If 
Burns and Lincoln were not so near us, the author- 
ship of " Tam o' Shanter " and the Gettysburg 
address would have been challenged on the ground 



42 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of inadequate preparation for such- masterpieces of 
expression. 

These three masters of speech were exceptionally 
well educated for their art, for no man becomes an 
artist except by the way of apprenticeship ; but 
their education was individual rather than formal, 
and liberating rather than disciplinary. The two 
poets were saturated in the most sensitive period 
in the unfolding of the imagination with the very 
genius of the people among whom they were to 
work and whose deepest instincts they were to 
interpret. Their supreme good fortune lay in 
the fact that they were educated through the 
imagination rather than through the memory 
and the rationalizing faculties. A man some- 
times gets this kind of education in the schools, 
but he oftener misses it. He is always supremely 
fortunate if he gets it at all. Shakespeare re- 
ceived it from several sources ; one of them 
being the love of the drama in the town in 
which he was born, access to its records of every 
sort, and acquaintanceship with the custodians 
of its traditions and the practitioners of its 
art. 

But he was by no means lacking in educational 
opportunities of a formal kind. The Grammar 
School on Church Street, adjoining the Guild 
Chapel and across Chapel Lane from the site of 
the poet's later home, one of the oldest and most 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 



43 



picturesque buildings now standing in Stratford, 
was founded at the close of the fifteenth century. 
It was part of an older religious foundation, of 
which the Chapel still remains, and which once 
included a hospital. After passing through many 
vicissitudes, the school was reconstituted in the 
time of Edward VI. The Chapel was used in con- 
nection with it, and, if tradition is to be accepted, 




LATIN ROOM, GRAMMAR SCHOOL, STRATFORD. 

was occasionally employed for school purposes. 
It was built about the middle of the thirteenth 
century, and is a characteristic bit of the England 
which Shakespeare saw. The low, square tower 
must have been one of the most familiar landmarks 
of Stratford in his eyes. He saw it when he came, 
a schoolboy, from his father's house in Henley 
Street, and turned into High Street ; and from his 
own home at New Place he must have looked at 



44 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

it from all his southern windows. The interior 
of the Chapel has suffered many things at the 
hands of iconoclasts and restorers, but remains 
substantially as Shakespeare knew it. The low 
ceilings and old furnishings of the Grammar School, 
blackened with time, make one aware, like the 
much initialed and defaced forms in the older 
rooms at Eton, that education in England has a 
long history. 

In Shakespeare's time the Renaissance influence 
was at its height, and the schools were bearing the 
fruits of the new learning. Education was essen- 
tially literary, and dealt almost exclusively with the 
humanities. Greek was probably within reach of 
boys of exceptional promise as students ; but Latin 
was every boy's daily food. With Plautus and 
Terence, the masters of Latin comedy, with Ovid, 
Virgil, and Horace, the masters of Latin poetry, 
with -Cicero the orator and Seneca the moralist, 
Shakespeare made early acquaintance. When Sir 
Hugh Evans, in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," 
listens to the recitation, so familiar to all boys of 
English blood, of Hie, Hisc, Hoc, we are doubtless 
sharing a reminiscence of the poet's school days. 
The study of grammar and the practice of con- 
versation prepared the way for the reading of the 
classic writers, and furnished an education which 
was not only disciplinary but invigorating. With- 
out being in any sense a scholar, there is abundant 
evidence that Shakespeare knew other languages 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 



45 



and literatures than his own. His knowledge 
was of the kind which a man of his quality of 
mind and educational opportunities might be ex- 
pected to possess. It was entirely subordinate to 
the end of furnishing the material he wished to 




THE APPROACH TO HOLY TRINITY CHURCH. 

use; it was vital rather than exact; it was used 
freely, without any pretension to thoroughness ; it 
served immediate ends with the highest intelli- 
gence, and is inaccurate with the indifference of 
a poet who was more concerned with the sort of 



46 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

life led in Bohemia than with its boundary hnes. 
The o-reat artists have been noted for their insis:ht 
rather than their accuracy ; not because they have 
been untrained, but because they have used facts 
simply to get at truth. Shakespeare could be as 
accurate as a scientist when exactness served his 
purpose, as the description of the Dover Cliff in 
" King Lear " shows. 

In the plays there are recurring evidences that 
the poet knew Virgil and Ovid, and had not for- 
gotten Lily's grammar and the " Sententiae Pue- 
riles," which the schoolboys of his time committed 
to memory as a matter of course. In a number 
of instances he used the substance of French and 
Italian books of which English translations had 
not been made in his time. The command of 
French and Italian for reading purposes, to a boy 
of Shakespeare's quickness of mind and power of 
rapid assimilation, with his knowledge of Latin 
and the widespread interest among men of his 
class in the literature of both countries, was easily 
acquired. It must be remembered that for thirty 
years Shakespeare was on intimate terms with 
men of scholarly tastes and acquirements. The 
most splendid tribute among the many which he 
received from his contemporaries came from the 
most thoroughly trained of his fellow-dramatists ; 
one who stood preeminently for the classical tra- 
dition in the English drama. Shakespeare was 
neither by instinct nor opportunity a scholar in 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 47 

the sense in which Ben Jonson was a scholar; but 
he had considerable familiarity with four languages; 
he had access to many books ; he had read some 
of them with the most vital insight ; and he was 
exceptionally well informed in many directions. 

He knew something of law, medicine, theology, 
history, trade ; and this knowledge, easily acquired, 
was readily used for purposes of illustration ; some- 
times used inaccurately as regards details, as men 
of imagination have used knowledge in all times 
and are using it to-day ; but used always with 
divination of its spiritual or artistic significance. 
A careful study of Shakespeare's opportunities 
and a little common sense in reckoning with his 
genius will dissipate the confusion of mind which 
has made it possible to regard him as uneducated 
and therefore incapable of writing his own works. 
Aubrey's statement that "he understood Latin 
pretty well " is abundantly verified by the plays ; 
they also furnish evidence that he understood 
Italian and French. 

That he studied the Bible, either in the Genevan 
version or in the revision of 1568, is equally appar- 
ent. His references to incidents in Biblical history 
and his use of Biblical phrases suggest a familiarity 
acquired in boyhood rather than a habit of read- 
ing in maturity. The direct suggestions of the 
influence of the Bible are numerous ; but there is 
also the impression of a rich and frequent use of 
Biblical wisdom and imagery. Mr. Locke Rich- 



48 



WILLIA.AI SHAKESPEARE 



ardson has suo-orested that when Falstaff " babbled 
of green fields " his memory was going back to 
the days when, as a schoolboy, the Twenty-third 
Psalm was often in his ears or on his lips; and 
there are many places in the plays where Shake- 
speare seems to be remembering something which 
he learned from the Bible in youth. No collec- 
tion of books could have brought him richer 




'IHE GUILD CHAMBER IN THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 



material for his view of life and for his art, not 
only as regards its content but its form. 

The Grammar School, in which Cicero and 
Viro^il have been taus^ht in unbroken succession 
since Shakespeare's time, was a free school, taking 
boys of the neighbourhood from seven years up- 
wards, and keeping them on the benches with gen- 
erous disregard of hours. There were holidays, 
however, and there was time for punting on the 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 49 

river, for rambles across country, and for those 
noisy games, prolonged far into the evening by the 
long English twilight, which make the meadows 
across the Avon as vocal as the old graveyard about 
the church is reposeful and silent. 

Boys in Shakespeare's station in life rarely went 
to school after their fourteenth year, and the grow- 
ing financial embarrassments of John Shakespeare 
probably took his son out of the Grammar School 
a year earlier. The tide of prosperity had begun 
to recede from the active trader some time earlier ; 
whether his declining fortunes were due to lack of 
judgment or to the accidents of a business career 
it is impossible to determine. It is clear that he 
was a man of energy and versatility ; that he was 
successful at an unusually early age and in an 
unusual degree ; and that later, for a time at least, 
he was overtaken by adversity. In 1578, when the 
poet was fourteen years old, John Shakespeare 
mortgaged his wife's property at Wilmcote for the 
sum of forty pounds, or about two hundred dollars 
— the equivalent of more than a thousand dollars 
in present values. In the following year another 
piece of property at Snitterfield was disposed of for 
the same amount. Unsatisfied or dissatisfied credi- 
tors began to bring suits ; taxes went unpaid ; other 
properties were sold without arresting the down- 
ward movement; in 1586, when the poet went up 
to London to seek his fortune, John Shakespeare 
had ceased to attend the meetings at Guild Hall, 



50 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



and lost his right to wear the Alderman's gown in 
consequence ; later his goods were seized by legal 
process and warrants for his arrest as an insolvent 
debtor were issued. There is a story of a consider- 
able loss through the generous act of standing as 
surety for a brother; and it is known that there 




Gl'V's CLIFF AND THE AVON. 
From an old print. 



was, during these years, great distress in several 
branches of trade in Warwickshire. 

If it cost nothing to send, a boy to the Grammar 
School, it cost something to keep him there ; and 
by the withdrawal of his son when losses began to 
press heavily upon him John Shakespeare may not 
only have cut off one source of his expense, but 



BIRTH AND BREEDING 5 1 

gained some small addition to his income from the 
industry of another wage-earner in the family. 
After leaving school the son may have assisted his 
father, as Aubrey reports, or he may have entered 
the office of a lawyer, as a contemporary allusion 
seems to affirm ; nothing definite is known about 
his occupations between his fourteenth and eigh- 
teenth years. There is no reason why anything 
should have been remembered or recorded ; he was 
an obscure boy living in an inland village, before 
the age of newspapers, and out of relation with 
people of fashion or culture. During this period 
as little is known of him as is known of Cromwell 
during the same period ; as little, but no less. This 
fact gives no occasion either for surprise or scepti- 
cism as to his marvellous genius ; it was an entirely 
normal fact concerning boys growing up in unliter- 
ary times and rural communities. That these boys 
subsequently became famous does not change the 
conditions under which they grew up. 



CHAPTER III 

SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

The England of Shakespeare's boyhood and 
youth was not only dramatic in feeling but spec- 
tacular in form ; the Queen delighted in those 
gorgeous pageants which symbolized by their 
splendour the greatness of her place and the dignity 
of her person. Her vigorous Tudor temper was 
thrown into bold relief by her intensely feminine 
craving for personal loyalty and admiration. One 
of the keenest and most adroit politicians of her 
time, her instincts as a woman were sometimes 
postponed to the exigencies of the State, but they 
were as imperious as her temper. Denied as Queen 
the personal devotion which as a woman she craved, 
she fed her unsatisfied imagination on flattery and 
imposing ceremonies. In the summer of 1575, 
when Shakespeare was in his twelfth year, the 
Queen made that memorable visit to Kenilworth 
Castle which has found its record in Scott's brill- 
iant novel. Four years earlier, the royal presence 
at Charlecote (Sir Thomas Lucy, the future Justice 
Shallow, playing the part of host) had brought the 
Court into the immediate neighbourhood of Stratford. 

52 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 53 

Kenilworth is fifteen miles distant, but the magnifi- 
cent pageants and stately ceremonies with which 
Leicester welcomed the Queen were matters of gen- 
eral talk throughout Warwickshire long before the 
arrival of Elizabeth. 

The Queen's visit was made in July, when nature 
supplemented with lavish beauty all the various 
art and immense wealth which Leicester freely 
drew upon for the entertainment of his capricious 
and exacting mistress. Pageants and diversions of 
every kind succeeded one another in bewildering 
variety for ten days. The Queen was addressed 
by sibyls, by giants of Arthur's age, by the Lady of 
the Lake, by Pomona, Ceres, and Bacchus. There 
was a rustic marriage for her entertainment, and 
a mock fight representing the defeat of the Danes. 
Returning from the chase, Triton rose out of the 
lake and, in Neptune's name, prayed for her help 
to deliver an enchanted lady pursued by a cruel 
knight ; and straightway the lady herself appeared, 
with an escort of nymphs ; Proteus, riding a dolphin, 
following close behind. Then, suddenly, from the 
heart of the dolphin, a chorus of ocean deities sang 
the praises of the great and beautiful Queen. The 
tension of these splendid mythological and alle- 
gorical pageants was relieved by the tricks of necro- 
mancers, the feats of acrobats, and by fights between 
dogs and bears. The prodigality, semi-barbaric 
taste, and maornificence of the ac^e were illustrated 
for a royal spectator with more than royal lavishness. 



54 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



On a summer day the way from Stratford to the 
Castle lies through a landscape touched with the 
ripest beauty of England ; a beauty not only of line 
and structure, but of depth and richness of foliage, 
of ancient places slowly transformed by the tender 
and patient and pious care of centuries of growth 

into masses of 
greenness so afflu- 
ent and of such 
depth that it 
seems as if foun- 
tains of life had 
overflowed into 
great masses of 
foliage. 

The summer 
days were doubt- 
less long and 
wearisome to the 
boys in the Gram- 
mar School in 
the quiet villaQre. 

QUEEN ELIZABETH. ^ *^ 

The nightingale 
had ceased to sing along the Avon; the fragrance 
was gone from the hedges with their blossoms ; 
midsummer was at its height ; there was the smell 
of the new-cut grass in the meadows, touched here 
and there with the glory of the scarlet poppy. 
Whether the comino^ of the Oueen was made the 
occasion of granting a holiday it is much too late to 




SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



55 



assert or deny ; that the more adventurous took one 
is more than probable. In those days even the 
splendour of the wandering players paled before 
that of the Queen. She had been seventeen years 
on the throne. She had all the qualities of her fam- 
ily : the Tudor imperiousness of temper, and the 
Tudor instinct for understanding her people and 
winning them. The Armada was thirteen years in 
the future, and the full splendour of a great reign 
was still to come ; but there was something in the 
young Queen which had already touched the 
imagination of England ; something in her spirit 
and bearing which saved the poets of the time from 
being mere flatterers. Elizabeth was neither beauti- 
ful nor gracious ; the romantic charm which cap- 
tivated all who came into the presence of her 
unhappy contemporary Mary Stuart was not in her. 
But what she lacked as woman she easily possessed 
as queen; she had the rare gift of personifying her 
rank and place. The sense of sovereignty went 
with her. In a time of passionate energy and lust 
of life she was not only the centre of organized 
society, but the symbol of unlimited opportunity, 
fortune, and greatness. 

Where the Queen was, there was England ; she 
was not only its ruler, but the personification of its 
vitality and force. When she came into Warwick- 
shire, the whole country was stirred with the sense 
of the presence of something splendid and signifi- 
cant. Stories of the preparations at the Castle had 



56 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

been carried by word of mouth across the country- 
side. There were no newspapers ; no means of 
rapid communication with the outer world ; there 
were, for the vast majority of people, no books ; 
most men never went out of their native shires ; 
travellers from a distance w^ere few. Tales of 
Leicester's honours and emoluments were told and 
listened to like modern fairy stories ; his rapid 
advancement lent a kind of magic to the splendour 
of his state ; and the Queen was the magician 
whose touch made and marred all fortunes. In the 
time of Elizabeth as in that of Victoria, the Queen 
personified the English State and the majesty of 
the English race. Through this kind of symbol- 
ism a deep and formative educational influence has 
been silently put forth and unconsciously received. 
The Queen was in many ways the incarnation of 
the spirit of Shakespeare's time, and her coming into 
Warwickshire was like the advent of the world-ele- 
ment into a life which had felt only local influences. 
Chief among those influences was that of the 
lovely scenery by which the poet's young imagina- 
tion was enfolded. Whether he was one of the 
throng which waited for the Queen on some old-time 
highway, or stood with the eager crowd who gath- 
ered about the Castle gates on the great day of the 
royal visit, is of no consequence: it can hardly be 
doubted that the imaginative boy of eleven did not 
lose that splendid spectacle ; what is certain is his 
familiarity with the Warwickshire landscape — that 



58 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



fortunate landscape beautiful in itself and appeal- 
ing to every imagination because it was Shake- 
speare's country. 

There are more striking outlooks than those 
which are found between Kenilworth and Strat- 
ford ; there are 
more fertile 
and garden- 
like stretches 
of country; 
but there is 
nowhere in 
England hap- 
pier harmony 
of the typical 
qualities of the 
English coun- 
try : gentle 
undulation of 
wold and 
wood, groups 
of ancient 
trees, long 
linesof hedges, 
slow rivers winding under overhanging branches 
and loitering in places of immemorial shade ; stately 
homes rich in association with men and women 
of force or craft, or possessed of the noble art of 
gentleness in ungentle times ; a low, soft sky from 
which clouds are rarely absent, and an atmosphere 









T- 




b 




^ ^ipi 




1^ 




'M 




H 


^^ 


^ 




H 


Hi 


■j 


^^H^^R^^!^^ 


1^ 




w 


^H^^.: 




■pp 


Wm 




WHi 


HMp ^ 


/-"i vv 











In which Amy Robsart was imprisoned. 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



59 



which softens all outlines, subdues all sounds, and 
works magical effects of light and distance. These 
qualities of ripeness and repose are seen in their 
perfection from the ruined Mervyn's Tower, in 
which Amy Robsart was imprisoned. As far as 
the eye can reach, the landscape is full of a tender 
and gracious beauty. Nothing arrests and holds the 
attention, for the loveliness is diffused rather than 
concentrated ; it lies like a magical veil over the 
whole landscape, concealing nothing and yet touch- 
ing everything with a modulating softness which 
seems almost like a ffift from the imacjination. In 
midsummer, when the grain stands almost as high 
as a man's head, the foot-path which runs through 
it can be followed for a long distance by the eye, 
so sharply cut through the waving fields is it. 
Those winding foot-paths, which take one away 
from the highroads into the heart of the country, 
are nowhere more alluring to the eye and the im- 
agination than in Warwickshire. They make 
chances for intimacy with the landscape which the 
highways cannot offer. The long-travelled roads 
are old and ripe with that quiet richness of setting 
which comes with age ; they rise and fall with the 
gentle movement of the country; they are often 
arched with venerable trees ; they wind up hill and 
down in leisurely, picturesque curves and lines ; 
they cross slow-moving streams ; they often loiter 
in recesses of shade which centuries have conspired 
to deepen and widen. 



6o 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



But it is along the quiet by-paths that one comes 
upon all that is essential and characteristic in War- 
wickshire. These immemorial ways put any man 
who chooses to follow them in possession of the 
landscape ; they cross the most carefully tended 
fields, they penetrate the most jealously guarded 
estates, they offer access to ancient places of 

silence and se- 
clusion. The 
narrow path 
between the 
hedges is one 
of those rights 
of the English 
people which 
evidence their 
sovereignty 
over posses- 
sions the titles 
to which have 
been lodged for 
centuries in pri- 
vate hands. They silently affirm that, though the 
acres may be private property, the landscape is the 
inalienable possession of the English people. In 
May, when the hawthorn is in bloom and the night- 
ingale is in full song, a Warwickshire foot-path leads 
one into a world as ideal as the island in " The 
Tempest " or the fairy-haunted country of the " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream." That Shakespeare knew 




THE EARL OF LEICESTER, It 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 6 1 

these pathways into the reahii of the imagination 
there is ample evidence ; that he was famihar with 
these byways about Stratford is beyond a doubt. 
Does not one of them still lead to Shottery ? 

Kenilworth, which was a noble and impressive 
stronghold in Shakespeare's boyhood, ample enough 
to entertain a court with long-continued and mag- 
nificent pageants, is not less imposing in its vast 
ruins than in the day when knights rode at one 
another, spears at rest, in the tilting-yard and the 
Queen was received at the great gate by Leicester. 
In the loveliness of its surroundings, the beauty of 
its outlook, the romantic interest of its ivy-covered 
ruins, and the splendour and tragedy of its historic 
fortunes, it symbolizes the harmony of natural and 
human association which invests all Warwickshire 
with perennial charm. Much of this charm has 
come since Shakespeare's time, but it was there in 
quality and characteristic when he roamed afield 
on summer afternoons, or, on holidays, made his 
way to Kenilworth, Warwick, or Coventry. It 
was in key with his own poised and harmonious 
spirit ; its quality is diffused through his work. 
For nature in the plays is always subordinate to 
the unfolding of character through action, but is so 
clearly limned, so constantly in view, so much and 
so significantly a part of the complete impression 
which conveys not only a drama but its setting and 
atmosphere, that it must have had large space in 
the poet's spiritual life. 



62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

There are touches of Warwickshire in all Shake- 
speare's work: in " The Winter's Tale" the flowers 
of Warwickshire are woven together in one of the 
most exquisite calendars of season and blossom in 
the whole range of poetry ; in " As You Like It " 
the depths and hollows and long stretches of shade 
of the old Forest of Arden rise before the imagina- 
tion ; in " A Midsummer Night's Dream " there are 
bits of landscape which are now in fairyland, but 
were once good solid Warwickshire soil. The valley 
of the Tw^eed and the mountains about the Scotch 
lakes form a natural background for Scott's poetry ; 
the Ayrshire landscape rises into view again and 
aeain in the verse of Burns; the lake district of 
Cumberland, with its mists and multitudinous voices 
of hidden streams, lies behind Wordsworth's verse. 
In like manner, Warwickshire lies always in the 
background of Shakespeare's mind, and gives form, 
quality, and colour to the landscape of his poetry. 
Unless dramatic necessity imposes catastrophic 
effects upon him, as in "Lear" and "Macbeth," 
Shakespeare's landscape is reposeful, touched with 
ripe and tender beauty, happily balanced between 
extremes in temperature, happily poised between 
austerity and prodigality in beauty. Its loveliness 
has more solidity and substance than that which the 
New England poets loved so well, and the fragrance 
of which, as delicate as that of the arbutus, they have 
caught and preserved ; while, on the other hand, it 
has not the voluptuous note, the beguiling and pas- 




THE PATH FROM THE FOREST OF AKDEN TO STRATFORD. 



A typical English foot-path through the meadows, with hedges of hawthorn on either 
side. These paths are sometimes reached by a stile, as in this case, and sometimes 
by a kissing-gate. 



64 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sionate sensuousness, of the Italian landscape. The 
beauty of the country in which Rosalind wanders 
and Jacques meditates is more harmonious with 
man's spiritual fortunes and less sympathetic with 
his passion than that in which Romeo and Juliet 
live out the brief and ardent drama of that young 
love which sees nothino- in the world save the 
reflection of itself. The landscape of the Forest of 
Arden knows all the changes of the season, and 
bends the most obsequious courtier to its condi- 
tions; it has a quiet and pervasive charm for the 
senses, but its deepest appeal is to the imagination ; 
there is in it a noble reticence and restraint which 
exact much before it surrenders its ultimate loveli- 
ness, and in its surrender it reinvigorates instead of 
relaxing and debilitating. Its beauty is as much a 
matter of structure as of form ; as much a matter 
of atmosphere as of colour. And this is the 
charm of Warwickshire. 

It does not know the roll and thunder of the sea, 
which Tennyson thought were more tumultuous and 
resonant on the coast of Lincolnshire than any- 
where else in England ; it is not overlaid with the 
bloom which makes Kent a garden when the hop- 
vines are in flower ; it lacks that something, half 
legendary and half real, which draws to Cornwall so 
many lovers of the idylls of Arthur; the noble large- 
ness of the Somerset landscapes is not to be found 
within its boundaries; but its harmonious, balanced, 
and ripe loveliness is its own and is not to be found 
elsewhere. 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



65 



There are many points at which one feels this 
characteristic charm. From Kenilworth to Strat- 
ford, if one goes by the way of Warwick and Charle- 
cote, it is continuous. There are sweet and homely 
places along the road where the houses seem to 
belong to the landscape and the roses climb as if 
they longed for human intercourse ; there are 




THE FOREST OF ARDEN. 

The remains of a large tract of forest which formerly stretched away from Stratford 
on the west and north. 



stretches of sward so green and deep that one is 
sure Shakespeare's feet might have pressed them; 
there are trees of such girth and circumference of 
shade that Queen Elizabeth might have waited 
under them ; there are vines and mosses and roses 
everywhere ; and everywhere also there are bits of 
history clinging like old growths to fallen walls, and 
densely shaded hill, and stately mansion set far back 



66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in noble expanse of park. Through the trees the 
low square tower guides one to an ancient church 
set among ancient graves, with a sweet solemnity 
enfolding it in silence and peace. The fields are 
richly strewn with wild flowers, and every cliff, 
stone, and bit of ruined wall is hung deep with vine 
and moss, as if nature could not care enough for 
beauty in a country in which men care so much for 
nature. 

Warwick is a busy town on court and market 
days, but the old-world charm is still in its streets. 
Its ancient and massive gates prepare one for its 
quaint and narrow streets, on which half-timbered 
houses still stand; the venerable and picturesque 
Leicester hospital, founded by Lord Dudley in 
1 57 1, rising above the narrow entrance to the town, 
as one approaches it from Stratford, like a custodian 
of the old-time ways and men. The stream of 
sightseers which pours through the Castle cannot 
lessen its impressiveness, nor dull the splendour of 
the ancient baronial life which invests it with peren- 
nial interest. The view from the plant house, with 
the lovely stretch of sward to the Avon, the old-fash- 
ioned garden on the left, the Castle rising in mas- 
sive lines, the terraces bright with flowers, the 
cedars of Lebanon dark in the foreground, is one of 
the loveliest in England for its setting of opulent 
and dignified English life. 

But the view which Shakespeare must have loved 
is that from the Avon below the ruined bridge, 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



67 



whose piers, crowned with fohage, rise out of the 
quiet water in monumental massiveness. It was a 
tortunate hour which relieved them from the every- 
day work of a highway for traffic and made them 
tributary to its romantic interest and beauty. The 
dark tower rising from the river's brink, the long, 
massive front set with a multitude of shining win- 
dows, the gardener's cottage blossoming with roses 
to the very apex of the roof, the quiet river in 




CIIARLKCOTK HolSi:, KRoM THE AVON. 

which, on soft afternoons, all this beauty and gran- 
deur seem to sink into the heart of nature — this is 
Warwickshire ; where nature, legend, and history 
commingle in full and immemorial stream to nour- 
ish and enrich an ancient and beautiful landscape. 

Warwick Castle is a type of the great baronial 
home ; Charlecote belongs to another and more 
gracious order of architecture. It is a stately 



68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

house, with the characteristic environment of a 
great EngHsh estate — the long reaches of park-hke 
country, the fine approaches, the herd of mottled 
deer feeding at a distance with that intent alertness 
which shows that these shy creatures are at home 
only in the deep woods. No lover of Shakespeare 
can look at Charlecote or think of it without a vision 
of these wild creatures grazing at high noon under 
the shade of wide-spreading oaks, or stealing like 
phantoms through the soft moonlight. Such a one 
has no curiosity about the present ownership or 
occupancy of the house ; there lived, nearly three 
centuries ago, and there will always live, the immor- 
tal Justice Shallow. The great gates open upon 
one of the loveliest roads ; opposite is the tumble- 
down stile, a curiosity in itself, but concerning 
whose Shakespearean associations one must not 
inquire too closely. The house dates back to the 
year 1558, and the noble oaks, chestnuts, limes, and 
elms which stand in great groups or in isolated 
beauty in the park must have a still older date. In 
its lono;, ramblino- structure the architecture of Eliz- 
abeth's time is preserved in spite of later changes. 
It must be seen from the Avon if its spacious struc- 
ture and rich setting are to be discerned ; from the 
highway it is stately and dignified, but it is not 
beautiful. As one approaches it on the quiet river 
it discloses itself as part of the landscape. Octago- 
nal towers, turrets, oriel window and belfry ; the 
mellow red of long-standing walls relieved by great 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 69 

masses of green ; the walled terrace with great urns 
which in the blossoming season are overflowing foun- 
tains of colour ; the quiet loveliness of the terraced 
ground from the river to the house ; the broad steps 
which make the Avon companionable and approach- 
able ; the dignity, seclusion, and stately beauty of 
the landscape of which the house seems the focal 
point — all these separable features sink into the 
mind and leave a single rich, harmonious impres- 
sion of noble and characteristic English life. A 
herd of deer feeding under the trees looks up star- 
tled and seems to melt into the deeper wood : the 
river has the placidity of a stream which has never 
been awakened by the clamour of trade, although 
it turns a wheel here and there in its winding 
course ; the note of a hidden waterfall penetrates 
the silence and deepens it. 

The Avon knows no gentler landscape than that 
through which it passes as it glides out of the 
shadow of Hampton Lucy bridge, an old mill close 
at hand and a waterfall not far distant. On a sum- 
mer day, when the grain is ripening in the fields, it 
would not be easy to find a more charming epitome 
of rural England : the gray church tower rising 
above a noble group of elms ; the little village 
gathered about it as if for safety and companion- 
ship ; the murmur of the river as it drops into a 
lower channel ; the wide sunlighted fields, with 
glimpses of scarlet through the green and gold, and 
the larks rising out of their hidden nests, mounting 



70 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



swiftly until they become mere points against the 
soft blue of the low sky or the white masses of 
drifting cloud, hanging poised in mid-air and pour- 
ing out a flood of sweet, 
clear, haunting notes, 
full of the sound of run- 
ning water, of deep 
woods where the sun 
sets them aflame, and of 
the great open spaces 
of the meadows. No 
other bird has a note 




THE ROAD TO HAMPTON LUCY. 



so jubilant with the unspent freshness of nature; a 
sound in which there is no pathos of human need 
or sorrow, but the overflowing joyousness of that 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 71 

world in which the deep springs are fed and the 
roots of flowers nourished. 

Hark ! hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 

And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
His steeds to water at those springs 

On chahced flowers that Hes ; 
And winking Mary-buds begin 

To ope their golden eyes. 

The lark's note of unforced joyousness is often 
heard in Shakespeare's plays ; its buoyant music, 
rising as if from inexhaustible springs, was akin to 
his own fresh and effortless melody. 

Between Hampton Lucy and Stratford the dis- 
tance is not great, but the river moves with a lei- 
surely indifference to time which is amply justified 
by the beauty of its course. When that course lies 
enfolded in green and shaded loveliness, it is doubt- 
ful whether any point has a more compelling charm 
than the quiet graveyard where Holy Trinity keeps 
watch and ward over its ancient dead. On a 
moonlit night there is enchantment in the place ; 
the moment one leaves the street and enters the 
arching avenue of limes, the England of to-day 
becomes the England of long ago. The spire of 
the church, rising above the trees, seeming to bring 
into more striking relief the long, narrow, dark 
nave ; the graves, grass-grown and so much a part 
of the place that they suggest the common mortal- 
ity of the race rather than solitary death or individ- 
ual loss ; the level common across the river, which 



72 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

nightingales love when the bloom of May is on the 
hedges ; the deep shadows in which the river loses 
itself as one looks toward the mill, and the dark 
outlines and twinkling lights as one turns toward 
the village : all these aspects of the place, under the 
spell of one great memory, touch the imagination 
and make it aware of a brooding presence which, 
although withdrawn from sight, still loves and 
haunts this place of quiet meditation and of a 
beauty in which joy and pathos are deeply harmo- 
nized. Apart from the sentiment which the place 
of Shakespeare's burial must inevitably evoke, there 
is that in the scene itself which interprets Shake- 
speare's spirit and makes his genius more near and 
companionable. 

On such a ni^ht one turns instinctivelv toward 
Shottery with the feeling that the poet must have 
taken the same course on many another night as 
silent and fragrant. The old foot-path is readily 
found, and the meadows on either side are sleeping 
as gently in the soft, diffused light of the mid-sum- 
mer night as when the poet saw them in his youth. 
The little hamlet, a mile to the eastward, is soon 
reached, and the cottage in which Anne Hathaway 
spent her girlhood is so well impressed on the 
memory of the English-reading world that it is 
recognizable at a glance. The elms rise over it as 
if to protect it from the harsh approaches of wind 
and storm; it is so embosomed in vines that it 
seems to be part of the old-time garden whose 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



73 



flowers bloom to the very stepping-stones of en- 
trance. Its thatched roof, tinnbered walls, and pro- 
jecting eaves have preserved its ancient aspect ; and 
the story of its age is told still more distinctly in 
its low and blackened ceilings, its stone floors, its 
broad hearth and capacious chimney-seats. 




THE "BANK WHERE THE WILD THYME BLOWS." 

This bank is not far from Shottery, and is the only place near Stratford where the 
wild thyme is found. 

To the west and north of Stratford the Forest 
of Arden once covered a great stretch of territory, 
and traces of its noble beauty are still to be dis- 
cerned in the trees which spread a deep shade 
over hollow and hillside as one rambles across the 
Welcombe hills. In the distance the clustered 



74 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



chimneys of Charlecote are seen, and the ridge 
where the battle of Edge Hill was fought. The 
Forest of Arden has been a place of refuge for 
the imagination ever since the time when, by the 
alembic of Shakespeare's genius, it was transferred 
from Warwickshire to that world in which time 
does not run nor age wither; enough remains of 
ancient tree and shadowy silence to make its noble 
beauty credible. The foot-path brings one past the 
gates of Clopton — a spacious and dignified house, 
with a charming outlook, fine old gardens, some 
very interesting pictures, a rich heritage of ghost 
stories, and a generous host. The stone effigies 
of the Cloptons now fill the ancient pew in Holy 
Trinity, but they were long the foremost family 
at Stratford, men of force and benefactors of the 
town. Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the bridge 
over the Avon, and rebuilt the Guild Chapel, be- 
came Lord Mayor of London ; and others who 
bore the name honoured it. In the tower of the 
Guild Chapel there is a quaint recital of the vir- 
tues and generosity of Sir Hugh: "This monu- 
mental table was erected a.d. 1708, at the request 
of the Corporation (by Sir John Clopton, of Clop- 
ton, Knt., their Recorder), in memory of Sir Hugh 
Clopton, Knt. (a younger branch of yt ancient 
family), whose pious works were so many and 
great, they ought to be had in everlasting remem- 
brance, especially by this town and parish, to which 
he was a particular benefactor, where he gave ^100 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 75 

to poor housekeepers and 100 marks to twenty 
poor maidens of good name and fame, to be paid 
at their marriages. He built ye stone bridge over 
Avon, with ye causey at ye west end ; farther mani- 
festing his piety to God, and love to this place of 
his nativity, as ye centurion in ye Gospel did to 
ye Jewish Nation and Religion, by building them 
a Synagogue ; for at his sole charge, this beautiful 
Chappel of ye Holy Trinity was rebuilt, temp H. 
Vn, and ye Cross He of ye parish Church. He 
gave ^50 to ye repairing bridges and highways 
within 10 miles of this town." Then follows a 
recital of a number of benefactions to London 
and other parts of the country, closing with the 
words: "This chara table Gent died a Bachelr 15 
Sept. 1496, and was buried in Saint Margaret's 
Church, Lothbury, London." 

In this country Shakespeare's young imagination 
was unfolded ; against this background of tender 
and pervasive beauty he came to consciousness, 
not, perhaps, of the quality and range of his genius, 
but of the nobility of form and loveliness of colour 
against which the comedy and tragedy of human 
life are set as upon a divinely ordered stage. 



CHAPTER IV 

MARRIAGE AND LONDON 

There are traditions but no records of the 
period between 1577, when Shakespeare's school 
life ended, and the year 1586, when he left Strat- 
ford. In this age, when all events, significant and 
insignificant, are reported ; whefi biography has 
assumed proportions which are often out of all 
relation to the importance or interest of those 
whose careers are described with microscopic de- 
tail ; when men of letters, especially, are urged to 
produce and publish with the greatest rapidity, 
are photographed, studied, described, and charac- 
terized with journalistic energy and industry, and 
often with journalistic indifference to perspective; 
and when every paragraph from the pen of a suc- 
cessful writer is guarded from the purloiner and 
protected from plagiarist by laws and penalties, 
it seems incredible that so little, relatively, should 
be known about the daily life, the working rela- 
tions, the intimate associations, the habits and 
artistic training, of the greatest of English poets. 

And this absence of biographic material on a 
scale which would seem adequate from the modern 
point of view has furnished, not the ground — for 

76 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON *]"] 

the word ground implies a certain solidity or basis 
of fact — but the occasion, of many curious specu- 
lations and of some radical scepticism. Absence 
of the historical sense has often led the rash and 
uncritical to read into past times the spirit and 
thought of the present, and to interpret the con- 
ditions of an earlier age in the light of existing 
conditions. Taking into account the habits of 
Shakespeare's time ; the condition of life into 
which he was born ; the fact that he was not 
a writer of dramas to be read, but of plays to be 
acted, and that, in his own thought and in the 
thought of his contemporaries, he was a playwright 
who lived by writing for the stage and not a 
poet who appealed to a reading public and was 
eager for literary reputation ; recalling the inferior 
position which actors occupied in society, and the 
bohemian atmosphere in which all men who were 
connected with the stage lived, it is surprising, 
not that we know so little, but that we know so 
much, about Shakespeare. 

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has covered this ground 
with admirable clearness and precision : " In this 
aspect the great dramatist participates in the fate 
of most of his literary contemporaries, for if a col- 
lection of the known facts relating to all of them 
were tabularly arranged, it would be found that 
the number of the ascertained particulars of his 
"life reached at least the average. At the present 
day, with biography carried to a wasteful and 



78 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ridiculous excess, and Shakespeare the idol not 
merely of a nation but of the educated world, it 
is difhcult to realize a period when no interest 
v/as taken in the events in the lives of authors, 
and when the great poet himself, notwithstanding 
the immense popularity of some of his works, was 
held in no general reverence. It must be borne 
in mind that actors then occupied an inferior posi- 
tion in society, and that in many quarters even 
the vocation of a dramatic writer was considered 
scarcely respectable. The intelligent appreciation 
of genius by individuals was not sufficient to neu- 
tralize in these matters the effect of public opinion 
and the animosity of the religious world, — all cir- 
cumstances thus uniting to banish general interest 
in the history of persons connected in any way 
with the stage. This biographical indifference 
continued for many years, and long before the 
season arrived for a real curiosity to be taken in 
the subject, the records from which alone a satis- 
factory memoir could have been constructed had 
disappeared. At the time of Shakespeare's decease, 
non-political correspondence was rarely preserved, 
elaborate diaries were not the fashion, and no one, 
excepting in semi-apocryphal collections of jests, 
thought it worth while to record many of the say- 
ings and doings, or to delineate at any length the 
characters, of actors and dramatists, so that it is 
generally by the merest accident that particulars 
of interest respecting them have been recovered." 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 



79 



History, tradition, contemporary judgments scat- 
tered through a wide range of books and succeeded 
by a " Centurie of Prayse," the fruits of the critical 
scholarship of the last half-century, the Record in 
the Stationers' Register taken in connection with 
the dates of the first representations of the different 
plays ; and, finally, the study of Shakespeare's work 
as a whole, have, however, gone a long way toward 




THE PATH TO SHOTTERY. 
Kissing-gate in foreground. 



making good the absence of voluminous biographic 
material. Enough remains to make the story of 
the poet's career connected and intelligible, the 
record of his growth as an artist clear and deeply 
significant, and the history of his spiritual develop- 
ment legible and of absorbing interest. 

The kind of occupation which fell to Shake- 
speare's hands during the five years of his adoles- 



8o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

cence between 1577 and 1582 is a matter of minor 
interest ; the education of sense and imagination 
which he received during that impressionable 
period is a matter of supreme interest. That he 
early formed the habit of exact observation his 
work shows in places innumerable. No detail of 
natural life escaped him ; the plays are not only 
saturated with the spirit of nature, but they are 
accurate calendars of natural events and phenom- 
ena ; they abound in the most exact descriptions 
of those details of landscape, flora, and animal life 
which a writer must learn at first hand and which 
he can learn only when the eye is in the highest 
degree sensitive and the imaginatioh in the highest 
degree responsive. A boy of Shakespeare's genius 
and situation would have mastered almost uncon- 
sciously the large and thorough knowledge of trees, 
flowers, birds, dogs, and horses which his work 
shows. Such a boy sees, feels, and remembers 
everything which in any way relates itself to his 
growing mind. The Warwickshire landscape be- 
came, by the unconscious process of living in its 
heart, a part of his memory, the background of his 
conscious life. He knew it passively in number- 
less walks, loiterings, solitary rambles ; and he 
knew it actively, for there is every reason to believe 
that he participated in the sports of his time, and 
saw fields and woods and remote bits of landscape 
as one sees them in hunting, coursing, and fishing. 
He was in a farming country, and his kin on both 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 



Si 



sides were landowners or farmers ; he had oppor- 
tunities to become acquainted not only with the 
country, but with the habits of the birds and ani- 
mals that lived in it. 

He loved action as well as meditation, and his 
life was marvellously well poised when one recalls 
what perilous stuff of thought, passion, and imagi- 
nation were 
in him. It 
was perhaps 
through phys- 
ical activity 
that he worked 
off the fer- 
ment of ado- 
lescence, and 
went throuo^h 



r 




THE BUAK AT CHARLECOTE GATE. 



the storm-and- 
stress period without serious excess or mistake of 
direction. Sport would have furnished a natural 
outlet for such a nature as his at a time when self- 
expression in some form was inevitable ; and the 
spirit of sport, once aroused in a youth of ardent 
temperament, was not careful of the arbitrary lines 
which property draws across the landscape. To 
the sportsman the countryside is one unbroken 
field. 

There may have been, therefore, some basis of 
fact for the tradition w^hich has long affirmed that 
an unsuccessful poaching adventure in Charlecote 



82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Park led to the poet's departure from Stratford. 
This story was told succinctly by Rowe nearly 
a century after Shakespeare's death. " He had, 
by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, 
fallen into ill company, and, among them, some, 
that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, 
engaged him with them more than once in robbing 
a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of 
Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prose- 
cuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat 
too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill- 
usage, he made a ballad upon him, and though 
this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, 
yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it 
redoubled the prosecution against him to that 
degree that he was obliged to leave his business 
and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in 
London." 

Facts have come to light in late years which 
seem to show that the deer-park at Charlecote was 
not in existence until a much later date, and it has 
been assumed by some, who are perhaps over- 
anxious for Shakespeare's reputation, that the 
poaching story is entirely legendary. It rests 
entirely on tradition ; but the tradition was per- 
sistent during many decades, and finds some sup- 
port in the fact that Justice Shallow is beyond 
doubt a humorous study of the Sir Thomas Lucy 
of prosecuting temper. No trace of the ballad 
mentioned by Rowe remains. Poaching of this 



t^. 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 



83 



kind, although punishable by imprisonment, was 
not regarded at that time as a very serious offence 
against good morals, although not without grave 
provocation to landowners. Young men at the 
universities were not unfrequently detected in the 
same forbidden but fascinating sport. It is per- 
haps significant that Sir Peter Lucy, about this 




CHARLECOTE. 
As it appeared in the year 1722. 



time, publicly advocated the passage of more strin- 
gent game laws. 

The evidence is neither direct nor conclusive, 
but, taken as a whole, it seems to confirm the 
poaching tradition. It was, in any event, a much 
more serious matter for the owner of Charlecote 
than for the Stratford youth who fell into his 
hands ; for Justice Shallow has been accepted by 
later generations as a portrait rather than a cari- 
cature ; and what Shakespeare left undone in the 
way of satirizing the landowner against whom he 



84 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



had offended, another poet of Warwickshire birth, 
Walter Savage Landor, completed in his brilliant 
" Citation and Examination of William Shake- 
speare." It ought not to be forgotten, however, 
that the victim of the satirical genius of Shake- 
speare and Landor wrote these touching words for 

the tomb of his wife in 
Charlecote church : 

"All the time of her 
Lyfe a true and faithfuU 
servant of her good God ; 
never detected of any 
crime or vice ; in religion 
most sound ; in love to 
her husband mostfaithfull 
and true. In friendship 
most constant. To what 
in trust was committed 
to her most secret ; in 
wisdom excelling ; in gov- 
erning: her House and 
bringing up of Youth in 
the feare of God that did converse with her most rare 
and singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; 
greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none 
unless the envious. When all is spoken that can 
be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with 
Virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be 
equalled of any ; as she lived most virtuously, so 
she dyed most godly. Set down by him that best 




SIR T. LUCY. 



Monument in Charlecote Church. 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 8^ 

did know what hath been written to be true, 
Thomas Lucy." 

Sir Thomas may have had the qualities which 
Shakespeare imputed to him, but the likeness of 
the author of this touching inscription can have 
been caught only by the license of caricature in 
Justice Shallow. 

The poaching episode, if it has any historical 
basis, probably took place in 1585, when Shake- 
speare had been three years married, and, although 
barely twenty-one years old, was the father of three 
children. Richard Hathaway, described as a " hus- 
bandman," was the owner of a small property at 
Shottery, a mile distant from Stratford, and reached 
not only by the highway but by a delightful foot- 
path through the fields. The thatched cottage, so 
carefully preserved by the trustees of the Shake- 
speare properties, has doubtless suffered many 
changes since 1582, but remains a picturesque 
example of a farmhouse of Shakespeare's time. It 
did not pass out of the hands of the Hathaway 
family until about the middle of the present cen- 
tury, and Mrs. Baker, the custodian, who died in 
1899, was a. Hathaway by descent. Although 
Shottery is in the parish of Stratford, no record of 
Shakespeare's marriage to Anne, the daughter of 
Richard Hathaway, has been found in the parish 
register. In the Edgar Tower at Worcester, how- 
ever, a bit of parchment in the form of a marriage 
bond furnishes conclusive contemporary evidence. 



86 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



By the terms of this bond, signed by Fulk Sandells 
and John Richardson, husbandmen of Shottery, 
it is affirmed that no impediment existed to the 
marriage of WilHam Shakespeare and Anne Hatha- 
way. The document is dated November 28, 1582 
and the bondsmen make themselves responsible in 
the sum of forty pounds in case any impediment 




ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE. 

The living-room: Mrs. Baker, the custodian, who died in 1899, a member of the 
Hathaway family, by the fireplace. 



should be disclosed subsequently. The bond 
stipulates that the friends of the bride shall 
consent to her marriage, and, in that event, the 
customary reading of banns in church may be 
dispensed with and the marriage take place at 
once. 

In any one of the three parishes within the 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 8/ 

diocese in which the contracting parties Hved 
the marriage might have taken place. The regis- 
ters of two of the parishes have been searched 
without result ; the register of the third parish 
disappeared at the time of the fire which de- 
stroyed the church at Luddington in which it 
was kept. Marriage bonds were not uncommon 
in Shakespeare's time, but they were not often 
entered into by persons in Shakespeare's posi- 
tion ; the process was more expensive and com- 
plicated than the " asking of the banns," but it 
offered one advantage : it shortened the time 
within which the ceremony might take place. The 
bridegroom in this case was a minor by three 
years, and the formal assent of his parents ought 
to have been secured ; the bond, however, stipulates 
only that the friends of the bride shall give their 
consent. 

In such bonds the name of the groom or of his 
father usually appears ; in this case no member 
of Shakespeare's family is named ; the two bonds- 
men were not only residents of Shottery, but 
one of them is described in the will of the bride's 
father as " my trustie friende and neighbour." The 
circumstances seem to suggest that the marriage 
was secured, or at least hastened, by the family of 
the bride ; and this surmise finds its possible con- 
firmation in the fact that the marriage took place 
about the time of the execution of the bond on 
November 28, 1582, while the poet's first child, his 



88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

daughter Susannah, was christened in Holy Trinity, 
at Stratford, on the 26th day of May, 1583. It has 
been suggested on high authority that a formal 
betrothal, of the kind which had the moral weight 
of marriage, had taken place. The absence of any 
reference to the groom's family in the marriage 
bond makes this doubtful. These are the facts so 
far as they have been discovered ; it ought to be 
rem.embered, as part of the history of this episode 
in Shakespeare's life, that he was a boy of eighteen 
at the time of his marriage, and that Anne Hatha- 
way was eight years his senior. 

That he was an ardent and eloquent lover it is 
impossible to doubt ; the tradition that he was an 
unhappy husband is based entirely on the assump- 
tion that, while his family remained in Stratford, 
for twelve years he was almost continuously absent 
in London, and that he seems to speak with deep 
feeling about the disastrous effects of too great 
intimacy before marriage, and of the importance of 
a woman's marrying a man older than herself: 

... let still the woman take 
An elder than herself; so wears she to him, 
So sways she level in her husband's heart. 

This is, however, pure inference, and it is perilous 
to draw inferences of this kind from phrases which 
a dramatist puts into the mouths of men and 
women who are interpreting, not their author's con- 
victions and feelings, but a phase of character, a 
profound human experience, or the play of that 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 



89 



irony which every play- 
wright from y^schylus to 
Ibsen has felt deeply. 
The dramatist reveals his 
personality as distinctly 
as does the lyric poet, but 
not in the same way. 
Shakespeare's view of life, 
his conception of human 
d e s t i n y, his attitude 
toward society, his ideals 
of character, are to be 
found, not in detached 
passages framed and col- 
oured by dramatic neces- 
sities, but in the large and 
consistent conception of 
life which underlies the 
entire body of his work; 
in the justice and sanity 
with which the external 
deed is bound to the in- 
ward impulse and the visi- 
ble penalty developed out 
of the invisible sin ; in the 
breadth of outlook upon 
human experience, the 
sanity and balance of 
judgment, the clarity and 
sweetness of temper which 




A \iK\V OF WARWICK IN 

SHAKESl'liAKE'S TIME. 

From an old print. 



90 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

kept an imagination always brooding over the tragic 
possibilities of experience, and haunted by all man- 
ner of awful shapes of sin, misery, and madness, 
poised in health, vigour, and radiant serenity. 

It is perilous to draw any inference as to the 
happiness or unhappiness which came into Shake- 
speare's life with his rash marriage. It is true that 
he spent many years in London ; but when he had 
been there only eleven years, and was still a young 
man, he secured a home for himself in Stratford. 
He became a resident of his native place when he 
was still in middle life ; there is evidence that his 
interest in Stratford and his communication with it 
were never interrupted ; that his care not only for his 
family but for his father was watchful and ef^cient ; 
there is no reason to doubt that, taking into account 
the difficulties and expense of travel, his visits to 
his home were frequent ; there is no evidence that 
his family w^as not with him at times in London. 
In this aspect of his life, as in many others, absence 
of detailed and trustworthy information furnishes 
no ground for inferences unfavourable to his happi- 
ness or his integrity. 

The immediate occasion of Shakespeare's leaving 
Stratford is a matter of minor importance ; the 
poaching episode may have hastened it, but could 
hardly have determined a career so full of the 
power of self-direction. Sooner or later he must 
have gone to London, for London was the one 
place in England which could afford him the oppor- 




Copyright, 1899, by A. W. Elson & Co., Bostou 

IN THE GARDEN OF ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE. 

The figure in the foreground is the late custodian, Mrs. Baker. 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 9I 

tunity which his genius demanded. It cannot 
be doubted that through all the ferment and spirit- 
ual unrest through which such a spirit as his must 
have gone — that searching and illuminating experi- 
ence which is appointed to every great creative 
nature — his mind had moved uncertainly but 
inevitably toward the theatre as the sphere for the 
expression of the rich and passionate life steadily 
deepening and rising within him. The atmosphere 
and temper of his time, the growing spirit of nation- 
ality, the stories upon which his imagination had 
been fed from earliest childhood, the men whom he 
knew, the instinct and impulse of his own nature — 
these things determined his career, and, far more 
insistently than any outward circumstance or hap- 
pening, drew him to London. 

His daughter Susannah was born in May, 1583; 
in February, 1585, his twin children, Hamnet and 
Judith, were baptized. He had assumed the grav- 
est responsibilities, and there is no reason to doubt 
that he felt their full wei2;ht. Stratford offered him 
nothing which would have been anything more than 
drudgery to such a nature as his. To London, there- 
fore, in 1586 he made his way in search of work and 
opportunity. 

There were two well-established routes to Lon- 
don in that day of few, bad, and dangerous roads ; 
one ran through Banbury and Aylesbury, and the 
other, which lay a little farther to the west and was 
a little longer, ran through Oxford and High 



92 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Wycombe. The journey was made in the saddle or 
on foot ; there were no other methods of travel. 
Goods of all kinds were carried by packhorses ; 




THE CROWN INN, OXFORD. 

Where, according to tradition, Shakespeare lodged on his way to London. From an old 
print. This inn has entirely disappeared. 

wagons were very rude and very rare ; it was fifty 
years later before vehicles began to run regularly 
as public conveyances. If Shakespeare, after the 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 93 

custom of the time, bought a horse for the occasion, 
he probably sold it, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps sug- 
gests, on reaching Smithfield, to James Burbage, 
who was a livery-man in that neighbourhood — the 
father of the famous actor Richard Burbage, with 
whom the poet was afterwards thrown in intimate 
relations. It was the custom among men of small 
means to buy horses for a journey, and sell them 
when the journey was accomplished. Tradition 
has long affirmed that Shakespeare habitually used 
the route which ran through Oxford and High 
Wycombe. The Crown Inn, which stood near 
Carfax, in Oxford, was the centre of many associa- 
tions, real or imaginary, with Shakespeare's jour- 
neys from the Capital to his home in New Place. 
The beautiful university city was even then ven- 
erable with years and thronged with students. 
Shakespeare's infinite wit and marvellous charm, 
to which there are many contemporary testimonies, 
made him later a welcome companion in one of the 
most brilliant groups of men in the history of litera- 
ture. The spell of Oxford must have been upon 
him, and volumes of biography might well be ex- 
changed for a brief account of one evening in the 
commons room of some college when the greatest 
and most companionable of English men of genius 
was the guest of scholars who shared with him 
the liberating power of the new age ; for Shake- 
speare was loved by men of gentle breeding and of 
ripest culture. 



94 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Dickens once said that if he sat in a room five 
minutes, without consciously taking note of his 
surroundings, he found himself able, by the instinc- 




THE ZOUST PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
Now in the possession of Sir John Lister-Kaye of the Grange, Wakefield. 

tive action of his mind, to describe the furnishing 
of the room to the smallest detail. This faculty of 
what may be called instinctive observation Shake- 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 95 

speare possessed in rare degree ; he saw everything 
when he seemed to be seeing nothing. It is not 
impossible that, as Aubrey declares, " he happened 
to take the humour of the constable in ' Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream ' in a little town near Oxford." 
There is no constable in Shakespeare's single fairy- 
play, and Aubrey was probably thinking of Dog- 
berry or Verges. Shakespeare was constantly 
" taking the humour " of men and women wherever 
he found himself, and although Oxford is connected 
with his life only by a faint tradition, it may have 
furnished him with more than one sketch which he 
later developed into a figure full of reality and sub- 
stance. It would have been quite in keeping with 
the breadth and freedom of his genius to find a 
clown in Oxford more interesting than some of the 
scholars he met ; for clowns occasionally have some 
touch of individuality, some glimmer of humour, 
while scholars are sometimes found without flavour, 
pungency, or originality. Shakespeare's principle 
of selection in dealing with men was always vital ; 
he put his hand unerringly on significant persons. 
In 1586 he reached London, without means, in 
search of a vocation and a place in which to exer- 
cise it. The time was fortunate, and cooperated 
with him in ways which he did not, then or later, 
understand ; for, however clearly a man may com- 
prehend his gift and master his tools, he is too 
much a part of his age to discern his spiritual 
relations to it as these are later disclosed in the 



96 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

subtle channels through which it inspires and 
vitalizes him, and he in turn expresses, interprets, 
and affects it. 

To the youth from the little village on the Avon, 
London was a great and splendid city; but the 
vast metropolis of to-day, with a population of 
more than five million people, was then a town of 
about one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. 
The great fire which was to change it from a 
mediaeval to a modern city was almost a century 
distant; and the spire of old St. Paul's was seen, 
as one approached, rising over masses of red-roofed, 
many-gabled houses, crowded into the smallest 
space, and protected by walls and trenches. The 
most conspicuous objects in the city were the 
Tower, which rose beside the Thames as a symbol 
of the personal authority of the monarch ; the 
Cathedral, which served as a common centre of 
community life, where the news of the day was 
passed from group to group, where gossip was 
freely interchanged, and servants were hired, and 
debtors found immunity from arrest; and old 
London Bridge, a town in itself, lined with build- 
ings, crowded with people, with high gate-towers 
at either end, often ghastly with the heads that 
had recently fallen from the block at the touch of 
the executioner's axe. 

The streets were narrow, irregular, overhung with 
projecting signs which creaked on rusty hinges and, 
in high winds, often came down on the heads of 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 97 

unfortunate pedestrians. These highways were 
still foul with refuse and evil odours ; within the 
memory of men then living they had been entirely 
unpaved. Their condition had become so noisome 
and dangerous fifty years earlier that Henry VIII. 
began the work of paving the principal thorough- 
fares. Round stones were used for this purpose, 
and were put in position as they came to hand, 
without reference to form, size, or regularity of sur- 
face. Walking and riding were, in consequence, 
equally disagreeable. The thoroughfares were 
beaten into dust in summer and hollowed out into 
pools in winter ; a ditch, picturesquely called " the 
kennel," ran through the road and served as a 
gutter. Into these running streams, fed with the 
refuse which now goes through the sewers, horses 
splashed and pedestrians often slipped. The narrow 
passage for foot-passengers was overcrowded, and 
every one sought the space farthest away from the 
hurrying pedestrians and litter-carriers and reckless 
riders. Two centuries later Dr. Johnson divided 
the inhabitants of London into two classes — the 
peaceable and the quarrelsome, or those who " gave 
the wall " and those who took it. To add to the 
discomfort, great water-spouts gathered the showers 
as they fell on the roofs of houses and shops, and 
discharged them in concentrated form on the heads 
of passers-by. 

The London of that day was the relatively small 
and densely populated area in the heart of the 



98 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

modern metropolis which is known as the City. 
Its centre was St. Paul's Cathedral ; and Eastcheap, 
which Falstaff loved so well, was a typical thorough- 
fare. A labyrinth of foul alleys and dingy, noisome 
courts covered the space now penetrated by the 
most crowded streets. Outside the limits of the 
town stretched lonely, neglected fields, dangerous 
at night by reason of footpads and all manner of 
lawless persons, in an age when streets were un- 
lighted and police unknown. St. Pancras, sur- 
rounded by its quiet fields, was a lonely place with 
extensive rural views in all directions. Westmin- 
ster was separated from the city by a long stretch 
of country known later as the Downs ; cows grazed 
in Gray's Inn Fields. 

The Thames was the principal thoroughfare be- 
tween London and Westminster, and was gay with 
barges and boats of every kind, and noisy with the 
cries and oaths of hundreds of watermen. The 
vocabulary of profanity and vituperation was nowhere 
richer ; every boat's load on its way up or down the 
stream abused every other boat's load in passing; 
the shouts " Eastward Ho ! " or " Westward Ho ! " 
were deafening. 

In 1586 London was responding to the impetus 
which rapidly increasing trade had given the whole 
country, and was fast outgrowing its ancient limits. 
Neither the Tudor nor the Stuart sovereigns looked 
with favour on the growth of the power of a com- 
munity which was never lacking in the indepen- 



MARRIAGE AND LONDON 



99 



dence which comes from civic courage and civic 
wealth. James I. said, with characteristic pedantry, 
that " the growth of the capital resembleth that of 
the head of a rickety child, in which an excessive 




OLD LONDON BRIDGE. 
From an old print. 



influx of humours draweth and impoverisheth the 
extremities, and at the same time generateth dis- 
temper in the overloaded parts." The instinct 
which warned the father of Charles I. against the 
growth of London was sound, as the instincts of 



lOO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

James often were ; but there was no power within 
reach of the sovereign which could check the growth 
of the great city of the future. That growth was 
part of the expansion of England ; one evidence of 
that rising tide of racial vitality which was to carry 
the English spirit, genius, and activity to the ends 
of the earth. 



CHAPTER V 

THE LONDON STAGE 

A YOUTH of Shakespeare's genius and charm of 
nature needed only a bit of earth on which to put 
his foot in the arena of struggle which London was 
in that day, and still is, in order to make his way to 
a secure position. That bit of ground from which 
he could push his fortunes forward was probably 
afforded by his friendship with Richard Field, a 
Stratford boy who had bound himself, after the 
custom of the time, to Thomas Vautrollier, a printer 
and publisher in Blackfriars, not far from the two 
theatres then in existence, The Theatre and The 
Curtain. Richard was the son of " Henry ffelde of 
Stratford uppon Aven in the countye of Warwick, 
tanner," a friend of John Shakespeare. Young 
Field, who had recently ended his apprenticeship, 
came into the possession of the business by mar- 
riage about this time, and his name will always be 
kept in memory because his imprint appears on the 
earliest of Shakespeare's publications, the " Venus 
and Adonis," which was first issued in 1593 and 
reissued in 1594 and 1596; and on the title-page of 
" The Rape of Lucrece " in 1594. The relation of 
this printer and his predecessor to the poet was 



I02 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

intimate in the true sense of the word : Field not 
only gave to the world Shakespeare's earliest poems, 
but brought out several books which deeply influ- 
enced the young poet; in 1589 he printed Putten- 
ham's " Arte of English Poesie " and fifteen books 
of Ovid's " Metamorphoses " ; and he brought out 
at least five editions of North's translation of Plu- 
tarch's " Lives," that " pasturage of noble minds," 
upon which Shakespeare must have fastened with 
avidity, so completely did his imagination penetrate 
and possess Plutarch's great stories. 

The theory that Shakespeare worked for a time 
in the printing establishment is pure surmise; 
there is not even tradition to support it Friend- 
ship with James Burbage, one of the leading actors 
of the day, with whom Shakespeare became inti- 
mately associated, has been taken for granted on the 
assumption that Burbage was a man of Stratford 
birth ; and on the same ground it has been assumed 
that he knew John Heminge, who became at a later 
time his associate and friend ; it is improbable, 
however, that either of these successful actors was a 
native of Warwickshire. Nor is there good ground 
for the surmise that the poet began his career as a 
lawyer's clerk ; his knowledge of legal terms, con- 
siderable as it was, is more reasonably accounted 
for on other grounds. 

Tradition is doubtless to be trusted when it con- 
nects Shakespeare from the beginning of his career 
with the profession which he was later not only to 



THE LONDON STAGE IO3 

follow with notable practical success, but to prac- 
tise with the insight and skill of the artist. His 
mastery of the mechanism of the play as well as 
of its poetic resources was so complete that his 
apprenticeship must have begun at once. Assum- 
ing that he connected himself with the theatre at 
the very start, that period of preparation was amaz- 
ingly brief. >< It is highly probable that the stories 
which associate him with the theatre in the hum- 
blest way are true in substance if not in detail. The 
best known of these is that which declares that 
he began by holding, during the performances, the 
horses of those who rode to the theatres. It was 
the custom of men of fashion to ride ; Shakespeare 
lived in the near neighbourhood of both theatres; 
and James Burbage, the father of Shakespeare's 
friend the actor, was not only the owner of The 
Theatre, but of a livery stable close at hand, and 
may have given him employment. This story first 
appeared in print in 1753, and it was then an old 
tradition. The poet was not long in finding his way 
from the outside to the inside of the theatre. 

If he did not attain eminence as an actor, he knew 
the stage business and the management of a theatre 
from first-hand knowledge, and down to the minut- 
est detail. No man has ever kept the theory and 
the practice of an art more thoroughly in hand or in 
harmony. The plays hold the first place in poetry 
to-day because their literary quality and value are 
supreme; they were successful in the poet's time 



I04 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

largely because they showed such mastery of the 
business of the playwright. Shakespeare the crafts- 
man and Shakespeare the artist were ideal collabo- 
rators. Rowe's statement that " he was received into 
the company then in being at first in a very mean 
rank " has behind it two credible and probable tra- 
ditions : the story that he entered the theatre as a 
mere attendant or servitor, and the story that his 
first service in his profession was rendered in the 
humble capacity of a call-boy. The nature of the 
work he had to do at the start was of no consequence ; 
what is of importance is the fact that it gave him 
a foothold; henceforth he had only to climb; and 
climbing, to a man of his gifts and temper, was not 
toil but play. 

Shakespeare began as an actor, and did not cease 
to act until toward the close of his life. His success 
as a playwright soon overshadowed his reputation 
as an actor, but, either as actor or shareholder, he 
kept in closest touch with the practical and business 
side of the theatre. He was for many years a man 
of great prominence and influence in what would 
to-day be known as theatrical circles; and while his 
success on the stage was only respectable, his suc- 
cess as shareholder and manager was of the most 
substantial kind. It is clear that he inherited his 
father's instinct for business activity, and much more 
than his father's share of sound judgment and wise 
management. His good sense stands out at every 
stage in his mature life in striking juxtaposition with 



THE LONDON STAGE IO5 

his Immense capacity for emotion and excess both of 
passion and of brooding meditation. His poise and 
serenity of spirit were shown in his dealing with 
practical affairs ; and his success as a man of affairs 
is not only a rare fact in the history of men of gen- 
ius, but stood in close relation to his marvellous 
sanity of nature. He steadied his spirit by resolute 
and wholesome grasp of realities. 

It was a rough school in which Shakespeare found 
himself in the years of his apprenticeship; the pro- 
fession he chose, although associated in our minds, 
when we recall his time, with some of the gentlest 
as well as the most ardent and gifted spirits, was not 
yet reputable ; the society into which he was thrown 
by it was bohemian, if not worse; and the atmos- 
phere in which he worked, but which he seemed not 
to breathe, was full of passion, intrigue, and license. 
No occupation is so open to moral peril as that 
which constantly stimulates the great passions and 
evokes the great emotions ; and in Shakespeare's 
time the stage hardly felt the steadying force of pub- 
lic opinion. Lying under a social ban, it paid small 
attention to the standards and tastes of serious- 
minded men and women. The theatre of Shake- 
speare's time owed its immense productiveness to 
the closeness of its relations with English life and 
the English people, but that very closeness of touch 
charged it with perilous forces ; the stage was the 
scene of tumultuous passions, of fierce emotions 
whose tidal volume and intensity swept everything 



I06 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

before them; of violence, cruelty, and bloodshedding. 
The intense vitality which gave the age its creative 
energy in statesmanship, in adventure, in organiza- 
tion, and in literature, showed itself in perilous 
excesses of thought and conduct ; the people, 
although morally sound, were coarse in speech ; the 
vices of the Italian Renaissance did not seriously 
taint the English people, but they were familiar on 
the English stage ; the actor was not received as a 
member of society ; he was still a social outcast. 
Under such conditions the tragic fate of Shake- 
speare's immediate predecessors seems almost inevi- 
table ; and it is a matter of surprise that Shake- 
speare's friends in his profession were men, on the 
whole, of orderly life. 

There was ground, in the atmosphere which sur- 
rounded the stage in Shakespeare's youth, for the 
growing opposition of the Puritan element in Lon- 
don to the theatre ; but fortunately for the free 
expression of English genius, Elizabeth was of 
another mind. She, rather than her Puritan sub- 
jects, represented the temper and spirit of the people. 
She loved the play and was the enthusiastic patron 
of the player. In 1574, twelve years before Shake- 
speare came to London, the Queen had given a 
Royal Patent, or license, empowering Lord Leices- 
ter's servants to " use, exercise, and occupy the art 
and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Inter- 
ludes, Stage-plays ... as well for the recreation of 
our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure, 



THE LONDON STAGE 



107 



when, we shall think good to see them." Lord 
Leicester's company had appeared at Court on 
many occasions ; henceforth they called themselves 
" The Queen's Majesty's Poor Players." They were 
given the privilege of playing, not only in Lon- 
don, but through- 
out England ; but 
the plays they 
presented were in 
all cases to pass 
under the eye of 
the Master of the 
Revels, and no per- 
formance was to 
be given " in the 
time of Common 
Prayer, or in the 
time of great and 
common Plague in 
our said City of 
London." Such a 
license was ren- 
dered necessary by 
an Act of Parlia- 
ment adopted three years earlier; without it the 
players might have been apprehended as vagabonds. 
The Earl of Leicester's company of players bore 
his name and secured their privileges through his 
influence, but were not subsidized by him. Two 
years after receiving the royal license, they occupied 




ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER. 
From a contemporary crayon sketch. 



I08 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in Shoreditch the first public theatre erected in 
London ; so widespread was the popular interest, 
and so ripe the moment for the development of the 
drama, that at the death of Elizabeth London had 
no less than fifteen or eighteen playhouses. When 
Shakespeare arrived on the scene, two theatres had 
been built and several companies of actors regularly- 
organized. Choir-boys frequently gave perform- 
ances, and the choirs of St. Paul's, the Chapel 
Royal, and the school at Westminster were organ- 
ized into companies, furnished players for women's 
parts, and practically served as training-schools for 
the stage. Of these companies, that which bore the 
name of Lord Leicester soon secured a foremost 
place ; became, in the time of Elizabeth's successor, 
the King's Players ; included among its members 
Richard Burbage, the greatest tragedian of his time, 
John Heminge and Henry Condell, who laid pos- 
terity for all time under lasting obligations by edit- 
ing the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 
1623, and Augustus Phillips — all Shakespeare's 
intimate and lifelong friends. With probably not 
more than two exceptions, his plays were first 
brought out by this company. With this company 
Shakespeare cast in his fortunes soon after his 
arrival in London, when it was performing in The 
Theatre, with the Curtain as its only rival ; and he 
kept up his connection with it until his final retire- 
ment to Stratford. 

The first theatres were rude in structure and 



THE LONDON STAGE 



109 



bore evidence of the earlier conditions under which 
plays had been presented. The courtyard of the 
old English inn, with its open space surrounded on 
three sides by galleries, reappeared with modifica- 
tions in the earliest London theatres. These 
structures were built of wood, and the majority of 
the audience sat in the open space which is now 
known as the orchestra but was then called the 




THE BANKSIDE, SOUTHWARK, SHOWING THE GLOBE THEATRE. 
From Visscher's "View of London," drawn in i5i5. 

"yard" and later the pit, under the open sky. 
The Globe, which was the most famous theatre of 
Shakespeare's time, and with which his own for- 
tunes were closely identified, was shaped like a hexa- 
gon ; the stage was covered, but the private boxes, 
which encircled the central space or yard, were not 
roofed. The Fortune, which stood in Cripplegate 
and was one of the results of the great success of 
the Globe, w^as a square of eighty feet on each side. 
y^ The stage was nearly forty-five feet in depth ; three 
tiers of boxes encircled the yard. The stage stood 



no WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

upon pillars and was protected by a roof. The 
greater part of the audience sat in the " yard " and 
were called " groundlings " ; those who were able to 
pay a larger fee found places in the boxes or gal- 
leries ; the men of fashion, with the patrons of the 
drama, sat on the stage itself. 

The audience in the yard was made up of citi- 
zens of London, apprentices, grooms, boys, and a 
more dissolute and boisterous element who paid 
two or three pennies for admission. If it rained, 
they were wet; if the sun shone, they were warm; 
they criticised the actors and ridiculed the dandies 
on the stage ; they ate and drank and occasionally 
fought one another, after the fashion of the time. 
They were sometimes riotous. When the air of 
the yard became disagreeable, juniper was burned 
to purify it. The nobles and men of fashion paid 
sixpence or a shilling for a three-legged stool on 
the stage. These gentlemen, who were dressed, as 
a rule, in the extreme of the prevailing mode, were 
scornful of the people in the yard, and often made 
themselves obnoxious to the actors, with whose exits 
and entrances they sometimes interfered, and upon 
whose performances they made audible and often 
insulting comments. There were no women on 
the stage, and few, and those usually not of the best, 
in the boxes. 

The performances were given at three o'clock in 
the afternoon, and were announced by the hoisting 
of flags and the blowing of trumpets — a custom 



THE LONDON STAGE I I I 

which has been revived in our time at Bayreuth. 
Playbills of a rude kind were distributed ; if a trag- 
edy was to be presented, these bills were printed in 
red letters. In place of the modern ushers were 
boys who sold tobacco, nuts, and various edibles, 
without much attention to the performance or the 
performers. The stage was strewn with rushes, 
and partially concealed by a curtain. When the 
trumpets had been blown for the third time, this 
curtain was drawn aside and an actor, clad in a mantle 
of black velvet and wearing a crown of bays over 
a capacious wig, came forward to recite the Pro- 
logue. This speech was often interrupted and 
sometimes ended by the violence of the " ground- 
lings " or the late arrival of some rakish gentleman 
upon the stage. The people in the yard were, as a 
rule, more respectful to the plays and players than 
those on the stage. 

The costumes were often rich, and the stage was 
not devoid of gorgeous properties; but the scenery 
was of the simplest and rudest description, and the 
stage devices were elementary and transparent. 
The stage was narrow, projected into the audience, 
was partly filled by spectators, and was open to 
view on all sides save at the back. There were 
crude representations of rocks, trees, animals, cities. 
A placard on the walls of one of these wholly unde- 
ceptive cities announced that it was Verona or 
Athens or Rome ; the audience needed nothing 
more; a hint to the imagination was enough. 



112 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

" You shall have Asia of the one side, and 
Africka of the other," writes Sir Philip Sidney, 
" and so many other under-kingdoms, that the 
Plaier when he comes in, must ever begin with tell- 
ing where hee is, or else the tale will not be con- 
ceived. Now shall you have three Ladies walke to 
gather flowers, and then wee must beleeve the stage 
to be a garden. By and by we heare newes of ship- 
wracke in the same place, then wee are to blame if 
we accept it not for a rocke ; ... in the meane 
time two armies flie in, represented with foure 
swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart 
will not receive it for a pitched field ? " 

Against a background so meagre, heroes rode in 
on hobby-horses, and young women, whose chins 
were not always as closely shaven as they might 
have been, were frightened by pasteboard dragons 
of the simplest devices ; and yet no one was made 
ridiculous, and the disparity between the stage and 
the action was not perceived ! The imagination is 
more subtle than the most skilful stage carpenter, 
and more vividly creative than the greatest stage 
artist. " The recitation begins," wrote Emerson ; 
" one golden word leaps out immortal from all this 
painted pedantry and sweetly torments us with 
invitations to its own inaccessible homes." 

This absence of visible scenery imposed on the 
dramatist the task not only of creating the plot and 
action, but the background of his play; and much 
of the most exquisite poetry in our language was 



THE LONDON STAGE 



113 



written to set before the imagination that which the 
theatre could not set before the eye. The narrow 
stage with its poor devices was but the vantage- 
ground from which the poet took possession of the 
vast stage, invisible but accessible, of the imagina- 
tion of his auditors ; on that stage alone, in spite of 
modern invention and skill, the plays of Shake- 
speare are adequately set. 

The theatre was the channel through which the 
rising life of the people found expression, and accu- 
rately reflected the popular taste, feeling, and cul- 
ture ; it was the contemporary library, lecture-room, 
and newspaper, and gave expression to what was 
uppermost in the life of the time. The drama was 
saturated with the spirit of the age; it was passionate, 
reckless, audacious, adventurous; indifferent to tra- 
dition but throbbing with vitality ; full of sublimity 
when a great poet was behind it, and of rant and 
bluster when it came from a lesser hand ; it was 
insolent, bloody, vituperative, coarse, and indecent ; 
it was noble, pathetic, sweet with all tenderness and 
beautiful with all purity ; there was no depth of 
crime and foulness into which it did not descend ; 
there was no height of character, achievement, sacri- 
fice, and service to which it did not climb with easy 
and victorious step. At its best and its worst it 
was intensely alive ; and because it was so intensely 
alive it became not only the greatest expression of 
English genius, but the mirror of English spiritual 
and social life. 



114 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

" Rude as the theatre might be, all the world was 
there," writes Green. " The stage was crowded 
with nobles and courtiers. Apprentices and citizens 
thronged the benches in the yard below. The 
rough mob of the pit inspired, as it felt, the vigor- 
ous life, the rapid transitions, the passionate energy, 
the reality, the lifelike medley and confusion, the 
racy dialogue, the chat, the wit, the pathos, the sub- 
limity, the rant and buffoonery, the coarse horrors 
and vulgar bloodshedding, the immense range over 
all classes of society, the intimacy with the foulest 
as well as the fairest developments of human temper, 
which characterized the English stage. The new 
drama represented " the very age and body of the 
time, his form and pressure." The people itself 
brought its nobleness and its vileness to the boards. 
No stage was ever so human, no poetic life so 
intense. Wild, reckless, defiant of all past tradi- 
tions, of all conventional laws, the English dramatists 
owned no teacher, no source of poetic inspiration, 
but the people itself." 

This vital relationship between the English peo- 
ple and the English drama explains the growing 
interest in the stage during Shakespeare's career as 
actor and dramatist, and the prosperity which 
attended many theatrical ventures and notably his 
own venture. When he joined Lord Leicester's 
company at The Theatre, which stood in Shoreditch, 
in the purlieus of the City, the Curtain, which was 
a near neighbour, was the only rival for popular 



THE LONDON STAGE 



115 



patronage. But these houses were not long ii^ 
possession of the field. The Rose was built on 
Bankside, Southwark, not far from the tavern from 



i. 









VriV? 



'V- 



'- ' -^ 



'--.wi 























/ 



THE GLOBE THEATRE. 
From a drawing in the illustrated edition of "Pennant's London," in the British Museum. 

which Chaucer's pilgrims set out on their immortal 
pilgrimage. To this theatre Shakespeare's com- 
pany ultimately removed, and it is probable that on 



Il6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

its narrow stage he began to emerge from obscurity 
both as an actor and a playwright. He had gone a 
long way on the road to fame and fortune when 
Richard Burbage built the Globe Theatre in the 
neighbourhood of the Rose. Here his fortunes of 
every kind touched their zenith, and, by reason of 
his intimate association with its early history, the 
Globe has become and is likely to remain the most 
famous theatre in the annals of the English drama. 
In the management of the Globe Shakespeare came 
to hold a first place, with a large interest in its prof- 
its. It soon secured, and held until it was destroyed 
by fire in 1613, the first place in the hearts of the 
London public. Edward Alleyn was the greatest 
actor of his time outside the company with whom 
Shakespeare associated himself ; for a time the com- 
pany known as the Admiral's Men, with whom he 
acted, combined with Shakespeare's company and 
gave what must have been the most striking repre- 
sentations which English audiences had ever seen. 
The two companies soon separated, however, and 
the Fortune was built to furnish suitable accommo- 
dation for the Admiral's Men, of whom Alleyn was 
the star ; Shakespeare's company, now generally 
known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, being its 
chief competitor, with Richard Burbage as its lead- 
ing actor, supported by Heminge, Condell, Phillips, 
and Shakespeare. The Blackfriars Theatre, built 
by the elder Burbage on the site now occupied 
by the offices of the London Times in Victoria 



THE LONDON STAGE II7 

Street, was probably not occupied by the Lord 
Chamberlain's Men until the close of Shakespeare's 
life in London. 

Shakespeare's name appears on many lists of 
principal actors in his own plays, and in at least 




THE BEAR-BAITING GARDEN. 
This stood near the Globe Theatre, Bankside. 

two of Ben Jonson's plays ; according to Rowe, 
his most notable role was that of the Ghost in 
" Hamlet"; one of his brothers, in old age, remem- 
bered the dramatist's rendering of the part of Adam 
in " As You Like It " ; he is reported to have 
" played some kingly parts in sport." The stage 



Il8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tradition, as expressed by an actor at a later period, 
declared that he "did act exceeding well." That he 
was not a great actor is evident ; it was fortunate for 
him and for the world that his aptitude for dealing 
with the theatre was sufficient to give him ease and 
competence, but not enough to divert him from the 
drama. His experience as actor and manager put 
him in a position to do his work as poet and 
dramatist. He learned stage-craft, which many- 
dramatists never understand ; his dramatic instinct 
was reenforced by his experience as an actor. 
He must have been an intelligent and careful 
actor, studious of the subtleties and resources of 
his art, keenly sensitive to artistic quality in voice, 
intonation, gesture, and reading. His address to 
the players in " Hamlet " is a classic of dramatic 
criticism. 

That Shakespeare kept in intimate relation with 
the theatre as actor and manager until 1610 or 161 1 
there is no question ; his interest as shareholder was 
probably kept up until his death. In 1596, when 
he had gained some reputation, he was living in 
Southwark, not far from the theatres. The theatre 
of the day was crude and elementary in arrange- 
ment, scenery, and the sense of order and taste; 
but there was a vital impulse behind it ; popular 
interest was deepening in the face of a rising oppo- 
sition ; and it offered opportunities of moderate for- 
tune. The companies into which actors organized 
themselves were small, often numbering only eight 



THE LONDON STAGE 



119 



persons, and rarely exceeding twelve. The men 
who took the inferior and subordinate parts were 
called hirelings, and were paid small fixed sums as 
wages ; the actors were usually partners in the en- 
terprise, managing the theatres and sharing the 
profits according to an accepted scale of relative 
importance and value. 

The modern London society season was still in 
the future, but there seems to have been, even at 
that early day, some easing of work and activity 
during the summer months, and the various com- 
panies made journeys to the smaller towns. The 
records show that in successive seasons Shake- 
speare's company visited, among other places, Ox- 
ford, Shrewsbury, Coventry, Dover, Bristol, Bath, 
Rye, Folkestone. There is every reason to believe 
that Shakespeare travelled with his company on 
these tours, and that he became, in this way, per- 
sonally familiar with many of the localities which 
are described in the plays. 

The claim, more than once vigorously urged, that 
Shakespeare visited Scotland with his company, and 
breathed the air of Inverness, and felt the loneliness 
of the Highland heaths, which gave, by their wild- 
ness, a new note of strange and awful tragedy to the 
fate of Macbeth, does not rest on convincing evi- 
dence. There is more solid ground for the belief, 
advocated with persuasive force by Mr. George 
Brandes, that Shakespeare travelled in Italy and 
knew at first hand the background of life and land- 



I20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

scape against which many of his most characteristic 
plays, both tragic and comic, are projected. Then 
as now foreign tours were sometimes made by Eng- 
lish actors, and during the poet's Hfe the best works 
of the English drama were seen in France, Germany, 
Holland, Denmark, and other countries ; the chief 
patrons of the visiting artists being found at the 
various courts. 

Italy filled a great place in the imagination of 
contemporary Englishmen ; it was the birthplace of 
the Renaissance, the mother of the New Learning, 
the home of the young as of the older arts. Its 
strange and tragic history, repeated in miniature in 
the lives of many of its rulers, artists, poets, and men 
of affairs, threw a spell over the young and ardent 
spirit of a country just emerging into clear con- 
sciousness of its own spirit and power; while its 
romantic charm, its prodigal and lavish self-surren- 
der to passion, stirred the most sensitive and gifted 
Englishmen of the time to the depths. What Eu- 
rope is to-day, in its history, art, literature, ripeness 
of landscape, and social life, to the young American, 
Italy was to the young Englishman of Shakespeare's 
time, and for several later generations. 

Chaucer had gone to Italy for some of his most 
characteristic tales; Wyatt and Surrey had learned 
the poetic art at the hands of Italian singers ; the 
immediate predecessors of Shakespeare were deeply 
touched by this searching influence, and his im- 
mediate successors, Webster and Cyril Tourneur 



;'J 



:m 



u 



THE LONDON STAGE 121 

especially, gave dramatic form to those appalling vio- 
lations of the most sacred laws and relations of 
life which are the most perplexing aspect of the 
psychology of the Renaissance ; and it was from 
Italy, where his imagination was rapidly expanding 
in a genial air, that the young Milton was called 
home when the clouds of civil strife began to 
darken the close of that great day of which Shake- 
speare was the master mind. 

This home of beauty, history, art, romance, pas- 
sion, and tragedy must have had immense attractive- 
ness for Shakespeare, whose boyhood studies, earliest 
reading, and first apprentice work as a playwright 
brought him into close contact with it. Many men 
of Shakespeare's acquaintance had made the jour- 
ney, and were constantly making it; it was a 
difficult but not a very expensive journey; to visit 
Italy must have seemed as necessary to Shakespeare, 
as to visit Germany has seemed necessary to the 
American student of philosophy and science, and to 
visit France and the Italy of to-day to the student 
of art. 

Mr. Brandes bases his belief that Shakespeare 
made this journey on the facts that there were, in 
his time, none of those guide-books and manuals 
of various kinds which spread a foreign country as 
clearly before the mind of an intelligent student at 
home as a map spreads it before the eye ; that, at 
the time " The Merchant of Venice " appeared, 
no description of the most fascinating of cities had 



122 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

seen the light in England ; that the familiarity with 
localities, names, characteristics, architecture, man- 
ners, and local customs shown in " The Merchant 
of Venice " and in " The Taming of the Shrew " 
could have been gained only by personal acquaint- 
ance with the country and the people. 

On the other hand, as Mr. Brandes frankly con- 
cedes, there are mistakes in " Romeo and Juliet," in 
" The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and in " Othello " 
which are not easy to reconcile with first-hand 
knowledge of the localities described. It must be 
remembered, too, that the poet had immense capa- 
city for assimilating knowledge and making it his 
own ; that a social or moral fact was as full of sug- 
gestion to him as a bone to a naturalist ; that he 
lived with men whose acquaintance with other coun- 
tries he was constantly drawing upon to enlarge his 
own information ; and that he had access to books 
which gave the freshest and most vivid descriptions 
of Italian scenery, cities, and manners. Many of the 
striking and accurate descriptions of localities to be 
found in literature were written by men who never 
set foot in the countries with which they seem to 
show the utmost familiarity. One of the most 
charming of American pastorals describes, with com- 
plete accuracy of detail as well as with the truest 
feeling for atmospheric effect, a landscape which 
the poet never saw. On a fortunate day he brought 
into his library a man who knew no other country 
so well. He faced his visitor to the north. " You 




THE "BLACK BUST" OF SHAKESPEARE. 
From a plaster cast of the original terra-cotta bust owned by the Garrick Club, London. 



124 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

are now," he said, " standing by the blacksmith's 
forge and looking to the north : tell me everything 
you see." The visitor closed his eyes and described 
with loving minuteness a country with which he 
had been intimate all his conscious life. When he 
had finished, he was turned successively to the 
west, the south, and the east, until his graphic vision 
had surveyed and reported the distant and beautiful 
world which was to furnish the background for the 
poem. The process and the result are incompre- 
hensible to critics and students who are devoid of 
imagination, but perfectly credible to all who under- 
stand that such an imagination as Shakespeare pos- 
sessed carries with it the power of seeing with the 
eyes not only of the living but even of the dead. 

Shakespeare may have visited Italy during the 
winter of 1592 or the spring of 1593, when Lon- 
don was stricken with the plague and the theatres 
were closed as a precaution against the spread of 
the disease by contagion, but there is no direct 
evidence of such a visit ; his name does not appear 
on any existing list of actors who made foreign 
tours. It is a fact of some significance in this con- 
nection that the actors who made professional 
journeys to the Continent were rarely men of imi- 
portance in their profession. 



CHAPTER VI 

APPRENTICESHIP 

Probably no conditions could have promised less 
for the production of great works of art than those 
which surrounded the theatre in Shakespeare's time 
— conditions so unpromising that the bitter antag- 
onism of the Puritans is easily understood. It 
remains true, nevertheless, that in their warfare 
against the theatre the Puritans were not only con- 
tending with one of the deepest of human instincts, 
but unconsciously and unavailingly setting them- 
selves against the freest and deepest expression of 
English genius and life. The story of the growth 
of the drama in the Elizabethan age furnishes a strik- 
ing illustration of the difficulty of discerning at any 
given time the main currents of spiritual energy, 
and of separating the richest and most masterful 
intellectual life from the evil conditions through 
which it is often compelled to work its way, and 
from the corrupt accessories which sometimes sur- 
round it. The growth of humanity is not the 
unfolding of an idea in a v/orld of pure ideality ; it 
is something deeper and more significant : it is an 
outpouring of a vast energy, constantly seeking new 
channels of expression and new ways of action, pain- 
fully striving to find a balance between its passion- 

125 



126 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ate needs and desires and the conditions under 
which it is compelled to work, and painfully adjust- 
ing its inner ideals and spiritual necessities to out- 
ward realities. 

It is this endeavour to give complete play to the 
force of personality, and to harmonize this incalcu- 
lable spiritual energy with the conditions which 
limit and oppose free development, which gives the 
life of every age its supreme interest and tragic sig- 
nificance, and which often blinds the courageous 
and sincere, who are bent on immediate righteous- 
ness along a few lines of faith and practice, rather 
than on a full and final unfoldins^ of the human 
spirit in accordance with its own needs and laws, to 
the richest and most fruitful movement of contem- 
porary life. The attempt to destroy a new force or 
form in the manifold creative energy of the human 
spirit because it was at the start allied with evil con- 
ditions has often been made in entire honesty of pur- 
pose, but has been rarely successful ; for the vital 
force denied one channel, finds another. The thea- 
tre in Shakespeare's time was a product of a very 
crude and coarse but very rich life ; it served, not to 
create evil conditions, but to bring those already 
existing into clear light. The Puritans made the 
familiar mistake of striking at the expression rather 
than at the cause of social evils ; they laid a heavy 
hand on a normal and inevitable activity instead of 
fastening upon and stripping away the demoralizing 
influences which gathered about it. 



APPRENTICESHIP 



127 



Shakespeare came at the last hour which could 
have made room for him ; twenty-five years later he 
would have been denied expression, or his free and 
comprehensive genius would have suffered serious 
distortion. The loveliness of Milton's earlier lyrics 
reflects the joyousness and freedom of the golden 
age of English dramatic poetry. The Puritan tem- 
per was silently or noisily spreading through the 
whole period of Shakespeare's career ; within twenty- 
five years after his death it had closed the theatres 
and was making a desperate fight for the right to 




THE BANKSIUE, SOUTHWARK, SHOWING THE SWAN THEATRE. 
From Visscher's " View of London," drawn in 1616. 

live according to conscience. Shakespeare arrived 
on the stage when the great schism which was to 
divide the English people had not gone beyond the 
stage of growing divergence of social and religious 
ideals ; there was still a united England. 

The London theatres stood in suburbs which 
would to-day be called slums ; when complaint was 
made of the inconvenience of these outlying situa- 



128 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tions, It was promptly affirmed that " the remedy 
is ill-conceived to bring them into London ; " in 
regard to the regulation that performances should 
not be given during prayer-time, "it may be noted 
how uncomely it is for youth to run straight from 
prayers to plays, from God's service to the Devil's." 
The theatres had come into existence under the 
most adverse conditions, but they had established 
themselves because there was a genuine force 
behind them. They had already touched the Eng- 
lish spirit with definite influences. In the reign of 
Elizabeth's reactionary sister the freedom with 
which the stage, the predecessor of the newspaper 
as a means of spreading popular , opinion and dis- 
cussing questions of popular interest, had spoken 
had brought first more rigid censorship and finally 
suppression of secular dramas throughout England. 
The court and the nobles reserved the privilege of 
witnessing plays in palaces and castles, but the 
play was too frank, in the judgment of many, to 
be allowed to speak to the people. The people 
were not, however, to be denied that which the 
higher classes found essential ; regulations were 
eluded or disregarded, and plays were given 
secretly. 

When Elizabeth came to the throne, the rules 
imposed on players were regulative rather than 
prohibitory ; for Elizabeth had no mind to put 
under royal ban one of the chief means of easing 
the popular feeling by giving it expression, and 



APPRENTICESHIP ^ 1 29 

of developing true English feeling by the presenta- 
tion of the chief figures and the most significant 
events in English ifistory. Companies were organ- 
ized and licensed 
under the patronage 
of noblemen ; theatres 
were built, and the 
drama became a rec- 
ognized form of 
amusement in Lon- 
don, But from the 
beginning the theatre 
was opposed and de- 
nounced. Archbishop 
Grindall fought it 
vigorously, on the 
ground that actors 
were " an idle sort 
of people, which had 
been infamous in all 



good 



common- 




wealths," and that 
the crowds which at- 
tended the perform- 
ances spread the 
plague by which Lon- 
don was ravaged for 
a number of years, and of which there was great 
and well-founded dread. In spite of the Queen's 
favour and of Leicester's patronage, theatres were 



QUEEN ELIZABETH ENTHRONED. 
From a rare old print. 



130 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

compelled to take refuge in the suburbs. The strug- 
gle between the players, backed by the Queen, and 
the City authorities was long and bitter. The Cor- 
poration was determined to exclude players from the 
City, and to prevent them from giving performances 
during service hours, on holidays, or during the prev- 
alence of the plague. Bitter as the struggle was, 
however, neither side was willing to carry it to a de- 
cisive issue. The Queen, who knew to a nicety how 
far she could go in asserting the royal prerogatives, 
had no desire to antagonize a community of grow- 
ing importance and power, and exceedingly jealous 
cf its rights and privileges ; the City had no wish 
to set itself in final opposition to that which a pow- 
erful sovereign evidently had very much at heart. 
The players ceased to give regular performances 
within the City limits, but became, in consequence 
of this opposition, a permanent feature of the life 
of the metropolis by building permanent buildings 
within easy reach of the City. 

And the theatre throve in the face of an opposi- 
tion which ceased to be official only to become 
more general and passionate. The pamphlet, 
which was soon to come from the press in great 
numbers and to do the work of the newspaper, 
began to arraign it in no measured tones; the Puri- 
tan preachers were unsparing in their denuncia- 
tions. " It is a woful sight," said one of these 
pamphleteers, " to see two hundred proud players 
jet in their silks, when five hundred poor people 



APPRENTICESHIP I3I 

starve in the streets." It does not appear to have 
occurred to this critic of the play that whatever 
force his statement had, weighed equally on the 
court, the nobility, and the very respectable but also 
very prosperous burghers who jostled the same 
poor on their way to church. There is more point 
in the frank oratory of a London preacher in 1586, 
the year of Shakespeare's arrival in London: "Woe 
is me! the playhouses are pestered, where churches 
are naked ; at the one it is not possible to get a 
place, at the other void seats are plenty. When 
the bell tolls to the Lecturer, the trumpets sound 
to the stages." 

The opposition of the City to the theatres was 
later merged into the opposition of the Puritan 
party ; and when that party became dominant, the 
theatre was suppressed, with all other forms of 
amusement and recreation which the hand of 
authority could touch ; for the Puritan, bent on 
immediate righteousness and looking with stern 
and searching eye at present conditions, did not 
discern the significance of the drama as an art, and 
as an expression of the genius of the English peo- 
ple. With the Puritan party the vital character 
and force of the English people for a time allied 
themselves, and the right to live freely and accord- 
ing to individual conscience was finally secured ; 
but, as often happens, the arts of peace, giving full 
play to the spiritual life in the large sense, were 
misunderstood, denied, and largely suppressed dur- 



132 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ing the long and bitter strife of opposing parties 
and conflicting principles. The surroundings and 
accessories of the theatre were open to the charges 
brought against them and to the judgment which 
the Puritans pronounced upon them; but it would 
have been an incalculable disaster if Puritanism 
had come into power in time to thwart or chill the 
free and harmonious unfolding of Shakespeare's 
genius. 

The evils which earnest-minded Englishmen saw 
in the theatre were largely in its surroundings and 
accessories ; on the stage, life was interpreted for 
the most part with consistent sanity of insight and 
portrayal. When the appalling vices which devas- 
tated the moral life of Italy during the later Renais- 
sance are taken into account, and the fascination of 
Italian scholarship and genius are recalled, it is sur- 
prising that the English drama remained essentially 
sound and wholesome. The English dramatists 
studied the tree of the knowledge of evil, of the 
fruit of which the Italians had partaken with an 
appetite sharpened by a long denial of the ele- 
mental instincts of the body and the mind, but 
they refused to eat of it. In Shakespeare's later 
years and after his death, when the sky had per- 
ceptibly darkened, the tragic genius of Webster and 
Tourneur seemed to turn instinctively to the crimes 
of the Renaissance rather than to its vivacity, variety, 
passionate interest in life, and vast range of spirit- 
ual activity ; and such dramas as " The Duchess 



APPRENTICESHIP 1 33 

of Malfi " and " The Atheist's Tragedy " record 
the effect on the serious English mind of the 
almost superhuman energy of the Renaissance 
when it became an assertion of absolute individual- 
ism, a passionate defiance of all law, human or 
divine. Italy was both the liberator and the 
teacher of modern Europe ; in recovering the love 
of beauty, the freedom of spirit, the large and noble 
humanity of the Greek and Roman ideals, she ren- 
dered the modern world an incalculable service ; 
but in the tremendous ferment through which she 
passed, and the radical reaction against the mediae- 
val conceptions in which she had lived for centuries 
which followed, her moral life was well-nigh sacri- 
ficed. The immense resources which she recov- 
ered for mankind, the splendour of her genius, the 
range and depth of human experience which she 
made her own, and which she shared with the 
world in her stories and dramas, gave her an 
influence on the English imagination which was not 
diminished until long after Milton's time, and which 
was searching and almost overwhelming when 
Shakespeare began to write. The profanity, the 
cruelty, the excesses of passion, the use of crime, 
intrigue, and lust as dramatic motives, which re- 
pelled and alarmed the Puritans, were due largely 
to the influence and example of the Italian drama, 
and to the material furnished by the Italian novelle, 
or tales of love and intrigue; but these tragic themes, 
though often presented with repulsive frankness, 



134 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



were almost always moralized in treatment. If the 
crimes were appalling, the punishments were ade- 
quate ; the sin was not detached from the penalty 
by the subtlety of a corrupt imagination, nor was 
the deed separated from its inevitable consequences 
by that dexterity, so characteristic of the Italian 
Renaissance, of a mind marvellously trained but 
smitten with ethical blindness. Compared with the 
contemporaneous Italian and French dramas, the 
early English plays show distinct moral health ; 
they are more manly, virile, and wholesome. They 
are often coarse ; they touch upon forbidden things 
at times with evident enjoyment ; they occasionally 
show an inordinate curiosity concerning unnatural 
relations and offences ; but they are, as a whole, 
morally sound in the exact sense of the words ; and 
when the moral and intellectual conditions under 
which they were produced and the social influences 
which surrounded them are taken into account, they 
are remarkably clean and sane. 

The English language, in which strength, beauty, 
and compass of expression were combined, had 
become a well-defined and highly developed national 
speech when Shakespeare began to use it, but was 
still the language of life rather than of literature; 
its freshest and most beguiling combinations of 
sound and sense were still to be made ; it was still 
warm from the moulds in which it had been cast ; it 
was still plastic to the touch of the imagination. 
The poet had learned its most intimate familiar 



APPRENTICESHIP 



135 



symbols of homely, domestic, daily life among the 
people at Strat- 
ford ; he had 
drunk of its 
ancient classi- 
cal springs in 
the grammar 
school ; and, in 
London, among 
men of gift, 
quality, and 
knowledge of 
the world, he 
came quickly to 
master the vo- 
cabulary of the 
men of action, 
adventure, and 
affairs. The 
drama as a liter- 
ary form was at 
the same criti- 
cal stage ; it 
was well de- 
fined, its main 
lines were dis- 
tinctly marked, 
but it had not 
hardened into william shakespeare. 

£• 1 r The J. Q. A. Ward statue, which stands at the entrance to the 

inailOrmS. Mall, central Park, New York. 




136 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The genius of Marlowe had brought to its de- 
velopment the richness of diction and the imagi- 
native splendour of great poetry. It remained for 
Shakespeare to harmonize both language and art 
with the highest individual insight and gift of song, 
and to blend in forms of ultimate beauty and power 
the vitality of his age, the quality of his genius, a 
great philosophy of life, and the freedom and flexi- 
bility of a language of noble compass both of 
thought and music. 

The stage offered both the form and the field for 
a great popular literature ; a literature capacious 
enough to receive and conserve the largest thought 
concerning human destiny, to disclose and to employ 
the finest resources of poetry, and yet to use a speech 
which was part of every Englishman's memory and 
experience. The drama was the one great oppor- 
tunity of expression which the age offered, and 
Shakespeare turned to it instinctively. The meas- 
ure of his genius was the measure of his sensitive- 
ness, and his imagination ran into dramatic channels 
by the spiritual gravitation of his whole nature. 
It is true, the drama was not yet recognized as a form 
of literature ; and in this fortunate fact lies one of 
the secrets of Shakespeare's freshness and freedom ; 
he wrote neither for the critics of his own time nor 
for that vague but inexorable posterity which is the 
final judge of the artist's work. He poured his 
genius, with a sublime indifference to the verdict of 
the future, into the nearest, the most capacious, and 



APPRENTICESHIP 1 37 

the most vital forms. It is doubtful if he ever differ- 
entiated in his own mind the different kinds of work 
which fell to his hand ; he was actor, manager, and 
playwright, after the fashion of his time, without 
literary self-consciousness and without literary ambi- 
tions in the modern sense of the word; doing his 
work as if the eyes of the whole world were to read it, 
but doing it for the immediate reward of crowded 
audiences and the satisfaction of his own artistic con- 
science. Shakespeare reached London about 1586, 
when he was twenty-two years old ; five years later, 
in 1 591, he was revising or writing plays; and in 
161 2 his work was done. In about twenty years I 
he wrote the thirty-six or thirty-seven five-act plays 
which bear his name ; " Venus and Adonis," " The 
Rape of Lucrece," " A Lover's Complaint," " The 
Phoenix and Turtle "; the sequence of sonnets which 
of themselves would have put him in the front rank 
of lyric poets ; and he made important contributions 
to the composite and surreptitiously printed " The 
Passionate Pilgrim." There is no probability that 
the date from which the indentures of his apprentice- 
ship to the arts of poetry and play-writing ran will 
ever be known ; it is known that not later than 1591 
his hand was beginning to make itself felt. The 
time was prodigal of great men and great work. 
Greene, who died the following year, was starving 
in a garret which was in no sense traditional ; Mar- 
lowe met his untimely death in 1593; the final 
issues of Lyly's " Euphues " were being widely read ; 



138 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Sidney's "Arcadia," which had been handed about 
in manuscript, after the fashion of a time when 
the pubHsher and the reading public were more than 
a century in the future, could be read from a well- 
printed page ; the first books of the " Faerie Queene " 
had come out of Ireland; Sidney's " Apologie for 
Poetrie," written in defence of the stage, appeared 
in 1595, eight years after his death on the bloody 
field of Zutphen; Webb's "Discourse of English 
Poetrie " had come to light in the year of Shake- 
speare's introduction to London, and Puttenham's 
"Arte of English Poesie " had followed it three years 
later. Criticism did not lag behind the beautiful 
lyrical and rich dramatic productiveness of the age. 
Men of action and men of letters were equally astir, 
and the names of Spenser and Raleigh, of Drake 
and Sidney, of Granville and Marlowe, were heard 
on all sides among the men with whom Shakespeare 
lived. The Armada was fresh in the memory of a 
generation upon which a multitude of new and stim- 
ulating interests were playing ; life was a vast fer- 
ment, and literature was on such intimate terms with 
experience that it became the confidant of life and 
the repository of all its secrets. 

That Shakespeare felt the full force of the intoxi- 
cating vitality of the air in which he lived cannot be 
doubted ; but his first attempts at play-writing were 
timid and tentative. The stages of the growth of 
his mind and art are distinctly marked in the form 
and substance of his work ; he was in no sense a 



APPRENTICESHIP 



139 



miracle, in no way an exception to the universal law 
of growth through experience, of spiritual ripening 
by the process of living, and of the development of 
skill through 
apprenticeship. 
He had to 
learn his trade 
as every man 
of parts had 
to learn it be- 
fore him, and 
will have to 
learn it to the 
end of time. 
His first steps 
were uncer- 
tain ; they did 
not lead him 
out of the 
green room 
where the 
stock of plays 
was kept. 
These plays 
were drawn 
from many 
sources ; they were often composite ; in many cases 
individual authorship had been forgotten, if it had 
ever been known ; no sense of personal proprietor- 
ship attached to them ; they belonged to the theatre ; 




SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
Engraving from the original of Sir Anthony More. 



140 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

many of them had been revised so many times by so 
many hands that all semblance of their first forms 
had disappeared ; they were constantly changed by 
the actors themselves. These plays were, in some 
instances, not even printed ; they existed only as 
unpublished manuscripts ; in many cases a play did 
not exist as an entirety even in manuscript ; it ex- 
isted only in parts with cues for the different actors. 
The publication of a play was the very last thing 
desired by the writer, or by the theatre to which it 
was sold and to which it belonged, and every pre- 
caution was taken to prevent a publicity which was 
harmful to the interests of author and owner. The 
exclusive ownership of successful plays was a large 
part of the capital of the theatres. Shorthand writ- 
ers often took down the speeches of actors, and in 
this way plays were stolen and surreptitiously 
printed ; but they were full of all manner of inac- 
curacies, the verse passages readily becoming prose 
in the hands of unimaginative reporters, and the 
method was regarded as dishonourable. Reputable 
playwrights, having sold a work to a theatre, did 
not regard it as available for publication. 

It is easy to understand, therefore, the uncertainty 
about the text of many of the Elizabethan dramas, 
including that of the Shakespearian plays. Having 
sold a play, the writer, as a rule, expected no further 
gain from it, and was chiefly concerned to protect it 
from mutilation by keeping it out of print. For this 
reason most of the plays acted in the reign of Eliza- 



APPRENTICESHIP I4I 

beth and in that of her successor are lost beyond 
recovery. In order to understand Shakespeare's 
attitude towards his work it is necessary to reverse 
contemporary literary conditions, under which au- 
thors are constantly urged to publish and the sense 
of individual ownership in literary work is intensi- 
fied by all the circumstances of the literary life. 
Plays were sometime published in Shakespeare's 
time by the consent of the theatres to which they 
had been sold ; but the privilege was rarely applied • 
for. When Ben Jonson treated his plays as litera- 
ture by publishing them in 16 16 as his "Works," 
he was ridiculed for his pretensions ; and Webster's 
care to secure correctness in the printing of his trage- 
dies laid him open to a charge of pedantry. At a 
later time the popular interest in plays for reading 
purposes opened an unsuspected source of income to 
play-writers, and publication became customary ; of 
the thirty-seven plays commonly credited to Shake- 
speare, only sixteen were published during the life of 
the poet, and these were probably printed without 
his authorization, certainly without his revision. 
There was no copyright law, and the author could 
not protect himself against imperfect reproduc- 
tions of his own works. Shakespeare's income 
came from the sale of plays and from the patron- 
age by the public of the theatres in which he 
was interested ; from every point of view he was, 
therefore, averse to the publication of his dramas. 
If he had set his heart on publicity, the theatre 



142 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

was the most effective form of publication which 
the times offered. 

The prices paid for plays ranged from five to ten 
pounds sterling, or from twenty-five to fifty dollars, 
Ben Jonson receiving the larger sum as a minimum. 
These plays, having become the absolute property 
of the theatre, were treated with the utmost freedom 
and were made over from time to time to suit the 
popular taste ; they were often the products of col- 
laboration between two or more authors, and the 
feeling of the writer for his work was so slight that 
many of the plays appeared without a name. 

In The Theatre or The Rose Shakespeare found 
a library of such plays which were the property, not 
of their writers, but of the owners of the theatre, and 
which were regarded not as literature but as the 
capital of the company, to be recast, rewritten, re- 
vised, and made over to fit the times and suit the 
audience, which was sometimes to be found at the 
Palace, sometimes in the Inns of Court, and regu- 
larly in the rude wooden structures in which the 
different groups of players had finally established 
themselves. These plays drew freely upon history, 
tradition, legend, and foreign romance and tale ; the 
soiled and tattered manuscripts bore the visible 
marks of the handling of many actors and prompt- 
ers, and the invisible traces of a multitude of histo- 
rians, poets, romancers, and dramatists whose work 
had been freely and frankly drawn upon ; each suc- 
cessive playwright using what he needed, and dis- 



APPRENTICESHIP 1 43 

carding what seemed to him antiquated or ineffective. 
When Shakespeare became familiar with this mass 
of material, he found, among other themes, the story 
of the fall of Troy, the death of Ccesar, and various 
incidents in the lives of Plutarch's men, a collection 
of tales from Italy with the touch of the Boccaccian 
license and gayety on them, stories of adventure 
from Spanish sources, dark, half-legendary narra- 
tives from northern Europe, and a long list of plays 
based on English history from the days of Arthur 
to those of Henry VIII. and the great Cardinal. 
These plays were, for the most part, without order 
or art ; they were rude in structure, crude in form, 
violent in expression, full of rant and excess of feel- 
ing and action, crowded with incident, and blood- 
curdling in their realistic presentation of savage 
crime ; but there was immense vitality in them. 
They were the raw material of literature. They 
were as full of colour and as boldly contemporaneous 
as a street ballad ; there was enough history in them 
to make them vitally representative of English life 
and character ; but the facts were handled with such 
freedom as to give the widest range to the genius of 
the individual playwright. 

This was the material which Shakespeare found 
ready to his hand when he began to feel the crea- 
tive impulse stirring within him ; and he used this 
material as his fellow-craftsmen used it. As an 
actor he knew these plays at first hand, and with a 
critical comprehension of their strong and weak 



144 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

points. He probably mended the loose and defec- 
tive lines in his own roles ; all actors of any origi- 
nality revised their lines freely. When he became 
familiar with the practical requirements of the stage, 
and gained confidence in his own skill and judg- 
ment, he set himself to working over some of the 
more popular plays which were in constant use. 
This was his journey-work, and in doing it he 
served his apprenticeship. The earlier plays which 
bear his name are, for this reason, his only in part. 
They show his touch, as yet largely untrained, but 
already marvellously sure, and with something of 
magic in it ; but they do not disclose the higher 
qualities of his genius, nor the large and beautiful 
art which he mastered after a few brief years of 
apprenticeship. 

While it is true that the exact order in which 
Shakespeare wrote his plays is still uncertain, and 
is likely to remain undetermined, there is very little 
doubt regarding the general order in which they 
were given to the public. Evidence both external 
and internal has at length made possible a chronol- 
ogy of the plays which may be accepted as conclu- 
sive in indicating the large lines of Shakespeare's 
growth in thought and art. The external evidence 
is furnished by the dates of the earliest publication 
of some of the plays in quarto editions, the entries 
in the Register of the Stationers' Company, and the 
references to the plays in contemporaneous books 
and manuscripts; to these must be added allusions, 



APPRENTICESHIP 1 45 

or supposed allusions, in some of the plays to con- 
temporaneous conditions, events, and persons. The 
internal evidence is derived from a critical study of 
Shakespeare's versification ; a study which has been 
sufficiently fruitful to make the application of what 
is known as the metrical or verse-test possible. 

The blank verse in the early plays conforms rig- 
idly to the rule which required a pause at the end 
of each line ; in the early verse rhyming couplets 
are in constant use. As the poet gained confi- 
dence and skill he handled his verse with increas- 
ing ease and freedom, expanding metrical usage, 
varying the pause, discarding rhyme and introduc- 
ing prose ; and there is an evident tendency to 
exclude the verbal conceits with which the drama- 
tist entertained himself in his earlier work. The 
growing habit, revealed in the later plays, of ending 
a line with a preposition or conjunction furnishes 
material for a very minute and valuable study of 
what have become known as " weak endings." All 
these variations and peculiarities of style throw light 
on the chronology of the plays. 

The first touches of Shakespeare's hand are found 
in the first part of " Henry VI., " " The Comedy of 
Errors," " The Two Gentlemen of Verona," " Love's 
Labor's Lost," and " Romeo and Juliet." The play 
of " Titus Andronicus " is usually included among 
the Shakespearian dramas, but there is little evi- 
dence of its Shakespearian authorship, and there 
are many reasons for doubting Shakespeare's con- 



146 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

nection with it. It was regarded as his work by 
some of his contemporaries, and included in the 
first complete edition of the plays in 1623; but 
sixty years after his death, Edward Ravenscroft, 
who edited the play in 1678, said: "I have been 
told by some anciently conversant with the stage 
that it was not originally his, but brought by a 
private author to be acted, and he only gave some 
master touches to one or two of the principal parts 
or characters." This tradition is probably in accord 
with the fact ; the repulsiveness of the plot, the 
violence of the tragic motive, and the absence of 
humour from the play are essentially foreign to 
Shakespeare's art and mind. He may have re- 
touched it here and there ; he can hardly have done 
more. 

And yet " Titus Andronicus," with its succession 
of sanguinary scenes and massing of moral atroci- 
ties, may well find a place at the beginning of 
Shakespeare's work, so admirably does it illustrate 
the kind of tragedy which the early Elizabethan 
stage presented to its auditors. The theatre was 
then in what may be called its journalistic stage ; 
it was reserved for Marlowe and Shakespeare to 
advance it to the stage of literature. It was to the 
last degree sensational and sanguinary, presenting 
feasts of horrors to the " groundlings," as the worst 
sort of sensational journals of to-day spread before 
their readers, in crudest description, the details of 
the most repulsive crimes and the habits of the 



APPRENTICESHIP 1 47 

vilest criminals. Elizabethan audiences delighted 
in bloody scenes and ranting declamation, and both 
are still to be found in the sensational press, with 
this difference : the early theatre reached relatively 
few people, but the modern journal of the worst sort 
reaches an uncounted multitude. This taste for 
horrors and this exaggeration of speech were glori- 
fied by Marlowe's genius but remained essentially 
unchanged by him ; it was left for Shakespeare's 
serene and balanced spirit, deeper insight, and 
larger art to discard the repulsive elements of the 
tragedy without sacrificing its power. In " Lear," 
" Macbeth," " Hamlet,"- and " Othello " there are, 
however, traces of the older drama. Shakespeare 
did not wholly escape the influence of his time in 
this respect. " Titus Andronicus " is not without 
power, but it is too gross and redolent of the sham- ^ 
bles even for Shakespeare's most immature art ; if 
he touched it at all, it must have been in a purely 
imitative way, and in the mere details of expression, j 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FIRST FRUITS 

Whether touched and strengthened by Shake- 
speare or not, " Titus Andronicus " serves as a con- 
necting link between the drama as Shakespeare 
found it and his own work. It is not possible to 
determine the exact order in which the separate 
plays in the earliest group which record his period 
of apprenticeship appeared ; but of the chronology 
of the group as a group there is no doubt. The 
first play which found its way into print appeared 
in 1597, when "Romeo and Juliet," " Richard II.," 
and " Richard III." were published; but it was not 
until the following year that Shakespeare's name 
appeared on the title-page of a drama. As early 
as 1592, however, lines from his hand had been 
heard on the stage ; and he had begun the work 
of adaptation and revision still earlier. Among the 
plays which Shakespeare found in the library of 
The Theatre, many belonged to a class of dramas 
dealing with subjects and scenes in history — 
dramas which were probably more popular with 
the people who sat in the yard and in the boxes 
than any other plays which were presented to 
them. These plays appealed to the deepest in- 

148 



THE FIRST FRUITS 1 49 

stincts of men to whom the defeat of the Armada 
was a matter of very recent history, and in whom 
the race-consciousness was rapidly developing into 
a passionate conviction of the power and greatness 
of England. There was much in these plays 
which appealed to the imagination as well as to 
that thirst of action which was characteristic of 
the time. They brought before the eye and the 
mind the most commanding figures among the 
earlier kings and king-makers, and the most ex- 
citing and dramatic incidents in the life of the 
nation ; there was a basis of fact ample enough to 
give the mimic representations that sense of reality 
which the English mind craves, and yet there was 
scope for that play of the imagination which has 
kept the English from the rigidity, hardness, and 
spiritual sterility which are the fruits of too great 
emphasis on the bare facts of history ; there was 
always that touch of tragedy which invests a drama 
with dignity and nobility, and yet there was an 
abundance of that humour which is the necessity 
of healthy minds, because, by introducing the 
normal contrasts of life, it maintains that external 
balance which is essential to spiritual sanity. 

These chronicle plays were, moreover, thor- 
oughly representative of English society ; kings, 
nobles, statesmen, ecclesiastics, and the lords of 
war were always conspicuous in the foreground, 
but in the middle and background there were those 
comic or semi-comic figures in whose boastint^s, 



I50 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



blunderings, wit, and coarse vitality the common 
people took a perennial interest. These chronicles, 
crudely dramatized, were a rich mine of materials 




DKOESHOUT PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



for a dramatic genius of Shakespeare's breadth and 
vitality, and they must be placed, by force of the 
direct and indirect service they rendered him, with 
the three or four chief streams of influence which 



THE FIRST FRUITS 15I 

fed his creative activity. Their direct service was 
rendered in the material which they furnished him 
so abundantly ; their indirect service was rendered 
in the revelation of the possibilities for dramatic 
use of historical records which they made clear to 
him, and which sent him, with marvellous insight, 
to read the pages of Holinshed's " Chronicles " and 
North's translation of Plutarch's " Lives." In the 
arrangement of the thirty-seven plays according 
to subject-matter and treatment, the Histories fill 
a place hardly second to the Tragedies in impor- 
tance. The hold which these old plays had upon 
the mind of the English people was immensely 
deepened by Shakespeare's large and effective 
handling of historical characters and situations ; 
and he must be regarded as one of the prime 
forces in the development of that intense and 
deeply practical patriotism which knits the widely 
scattered parts of the modern empire into a vital 
racial unity. 

It was to this rich mass of material that Shake- 
speare turned at the very beginning of his career 
as a writer of plays. His vocation was probably 
not yet clear to him; he was groping his way 
toward free expression, but he did not find it in 
a day. No man of genius comes to complete self- 
consciousness save as the result of vital experience 
and a good deal of practical experimenting with 
such tools as are at hand. Shakespeare began, not 
as a creator of individual works of art, but as an 



152 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

adapter and reviser of the work of other men, or 
as a collaborator with his fellow-craftsmen. There 
have been a number of instances of conspicuously 
successful collaboration among dramatists ; in 
Shakespeare's time, when the end in view was not 
the writing of a piece of literature, but the mak- 
ing of a successful acting play, cooperation among 
playwrights was customary. 

The three parts of " Henry VI." register Shake- 
speare's earliest contact with the material afforded 
by the chronicles, and illustrate both the method 
of usinCT existing^ material in vogue at the time and 
the results of collaboration on the part of two or 
three contemporary writers who combined their 
various gifts in order to secure higher efficiency. 
Malone came to the conclusion, after long study of 
this three-part play, that out of 6043 lines 171 1 
were written by some author or authors preceding 
Shakespeare, 2373 were modified and changed by 
him, and 1899 written by his own hand. This 
mathematical exactness is more impressive than 
conclusive; it has this value, however: it brings 
into clear view the composite character of the 
play, and shows how Shakespeare learned his art. 
The poet was not bent on creative work, but on 
mastering the technical part of play-writing, Mar- 
lowe, Greene, and Peele have been credited with 
participation in the authorship of the play, but the 
passages assigned to them, and to an earlier drama- 
tist who furnished a common foundation for these 



THE FIRST FRUITS 



153 



later playwrights, have been selected upon internal 
evidence and rest upon conjecture. Shakespeare's 
connection with the play is, fortunately, beyond 
question ; whether he did much or little is of small 
consequence so long as we have in the play the 
material upon which he began to work. The 




THE TOWER OF LONDON, ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
From an old print. 



e 



sources of the play are to be found in Holinshed's 
" Chronicles " and Hall's " Chronicle." 

The presentation of " Henry VI." in its three 
parts at the Rose Theatre in the spring of 1592 was 
a notable event in the history of the early London 
stage. It was successful apparently, from the first 
performance, and the impression which it produced 
on men of intelligence is reflected in the words of 
one of Shakespeare's most successful contempora- 
ries: "How it would have joyed brave Talbot," 
wrote Nash: "to thinke that after he had lyne two 



154 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

hundred yeares in his Tombe hee should triumphe 
againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe 
embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spec- 
tators at least (at severall times) who, in the 
Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they 
behold him fresh bleeding." It is significant that 
the scenes in which Talbot appears as the leading 
figure in the first part are now assigned to Shake- 
speare by common consent. It is as difficult to 
doubt the hand of the coming master in the power- 
ful delineation of this great English soldier and his 
sturdy son as it is to find that hand in the cheap 
and coarse presentation of Joan of Arc. In the 
most immature stage of his development as an 
artist Shakespeare was incapable of so vulgar a 
misreading of a great career; his insight would 
have saved him from so gross a blunder. In the 
heroic figure of Talbot the typical Englishman of 
action, with his superb energy, his dauntless 
courage, and his imperturbable poise, appears for 
the first time on Shakespeare's stage and predicts a 
long line of passionate, daring, and effective leaders. 
The scene in the Temple Garden, where the red 
and white roses are plucked from their fragrant 
seclusion to become the symbols of contending 
factions on bloody fields, is unmistakably Shake- 
spearian ; and so also are some of the scenes in 
which Jack Cade and his mob appear. 

Shakespeare's part in " Henry VI." brought him 
immediate recognition. He was twenty-seven years 



THE FIRST FRUITS I 55 

old, and had been in London six years. His com- 
petitors remembered that a very little time before 
he had been holding horses outside the theatres or 
performing the very humble duties of a call-boy. 
He had come up from Stratford without influential 
friends, a university education, or technical training 
for play-writing, at a time when all the successful 
dramatists were university-bred, scholars, wits, and 
men whose social advantages, however lost or mis- 
used, had been considerable. A small group of 
these writers were in possession of the craft and 
business of supplying the stage with plays. To 
men of the experience and temper of Marlowe, 
Greene, Nash, Peele, and Lodge, the sudden popu- 
lar success of a youth with so little to aid and so 
much to retard him in external conditions must 
have seemed like an intrusion. They were men 
of loose lives, irregular habits, and broken fortunes. 
Robert Greene, the son of a well-to-do citi- 
zen of Norwich, was then in his forty-third year. 
When he left the university in 1578, he went 
abroad. " For being at the University of Cam- 
bridge," he wrote toward the close of his ill-spent 
life, " I light among wags as lewd as myself, with 
whom I consumed the flower of my youth ; who 
drew me to travel into Italy and Spain, in which 
places I saw and practised such villainy as is 
abominable to declare." The story of his later 
life, as told by himself, is pitiful in its moral 
degradation. On his death-bed — friendless, de- 



156 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

serted, penniless, and consumed with remorse — he 
wrote an appeal to his old associates, full of bitter- 
ness, sound advice, and malice. " A Groats-worth 
of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance," 
written in 1592 after the striking success of " Henry 
VI.," urges Marlowe, Peele, and Nash or Lodge to 
give up vice, blasphemy, and bitterness of speech. 
" Base-minded men all three of you," he writes, " if 
by my misery ye be not warned ; for unto none of 
you, like me, sought those burrs to cleave — those 
puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths, those 
antics garnished in our colours. . . . There is an 
upstart Crow, beautiful with our feathers, that with 
his Tygers heart wrapt up in a players hide sup- 
poses he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke 
verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute 
Johannes factotum is, in his own conceit, the only 
shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate 
your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable 
courses : and let these Apes imitate your past 
excellence and never more aquaint them with your 
admired inventions." 

This tirade against Shakespeare brings into 
clear relief the curious blending of remorse and 
jealousy which, even on his death-bed, was charac- 
teristic of Greene. Having wasted great talents and 
an adequate opportunity, he turned, with the hand 
of death upon him, with a malignant thrust upon 
the young poet who was already making friends by 
the charm of his temperament, as he was putting 



THE FIRST FRUITS 1 57 

new dramatic value into old and conventionally 
treated material by sheer force of genius. Mr. 
Symonds interprets this onslaught upon the rising 
playwright in this fashion : " We, gentlemen and 
scholars, have founded the Drama in England, and 
have hitherto held a monopoly of the theatres. 
Those puppets, antics, base grooms, buckram gen- 
tlemen, peasants, painted monsters — for he calls 
the players by these names in succession — have 
now learned, not only how to act their scenes, but 
how to imitate them, and there is one among them, 
Shakespeare, who will drive us all to penury." 

The fight against the new order which Shake- 
speare represented was useless, as such fights always 
are ; but Greene had very little insight into the 
nature of his art and its relation to the age, and he 
had already suffered one notable defeat. When he 
came to London, fresh from his university studies 
and his foreign travel, plays written in rhyme held 
the stage and were the special delight of theatre- 
goers, and Greene soon developed marked skill and 
facility in giving the public precisely what it liked. 
When he had gained the public and felt that the 
stage was practically in his hands, Marlowe brought 
out the tremendous drama of " Tamburlaine," 
written in blank verse, and effected a sudden and 
decisive revolution in public taste. Greene broke 
out into violent abuse of dramatists who were 
willing to stoop so low as to use blank verse ; and 
three years before the appearance of " Henry VI.," 



158 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Nash, who had been drawn into the fight by 
Greene, poured out his contempt on the " idiot art- 
masters, that intrude themselves as the alchemists 
of eloquence, and think to outbrave better pens 

with the swell- 
ing bombast of 
bragging blank 
verse, . . . the 
spacious volu- 
bility of a drum- 
ming decasylla- 
bon." 

It was not 
long before 
Greene was try- 
ing to make 
peace with the 
public by imi- 
tating the new 
style which 
Marlowe had 
brought into 
vogue. He 
made a truce 
with the author 
of " Tamburlaine," and the little group of scholar- 
dramatists controlled the business of play-writing. 
At the moment when their hold seemed most secure, 
Shakespeare appeared as a competitor. As Greene 
had fought Marlowe, so he fought Shakespeare ; 




SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. 
From the picture belonging to J. A. Hope, Esq. 



THE FIRST FRUITS 



159 



but in the case of Shakespeare there must have 
been something more than professional jealousy ; 
men on their death-beds, as a rule, are not con- 
cerned to protect from fresh competition a busi- 
ness in which they have lost interest; they are 
often eager, however, to pay off a grudge. The 
cause of Greene's hatred is to be found, probably, 
in the perception of the contrast between his wild 
and wasted youth and the singular promise and 
sanity of Shakespeare's early career. There is 
abundant evidence that there was something win- 
ning in the young poet's personality, as there was 
something compelling in his genius. Men were 
drawn to him by the irresistible attraction of his 
radiant and lovable temperament, with its magical 
range of sympathetic expression. Penniless, de- 
serted, and smitten with a remorse which tortured 
without purifying him, Greene shot his last arrow 
of malicious satire at the rising reputation of his 
youngest competitor, and shot in vain. 

Henry Chettle, who published his rancorous 
attack, followed it in December, 1592, three months 
after Greene's death, with a public apology which 
contains a few words of great value as indicating 
the feeling Shakespeare was evoking from his fellow- 
workers : " Myself have seen his demeanour no less 
civil than he excellent in the quality he professes; 
besides, divers of worship have reported his upright- 
ness of dealing which argues his honesty, and his 
facetious grace in writing that approves his art." 



l6o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The sensitive mind of Shakespeare felt keenly 
the dominant influences of his time, and his earlier 
work reflects those influences. Brilliant as that 
work is, it is mainly, with touches of imitation, 
tentative, registering the response of the poet's 
imagination to the different masters of his art. 
" Titus Andronicus," if it came from Shakespeare's 
hand, betrays the influence of Marlowe ; if this 
sanguinary drama is excluded from the canon of 
Shakespeare's dramas, then the reflection of Mar- 
lowe's powerful genius is to be found in " Richard 
II." and "Richard III." These plays were written 
a little later in time, but they belong within the 
first period of the poet's creative activity. Marlowe 
was then at the height of his fame and popularity, 
and Shakespeare could no more have escaped the 
spell of his splendid genius than a sensitive young 
poet of romantic temper in the decade between 
1820 and 1830 could have escaped the influence of 
Byron. The three parts of " Henry VI,," with their 
series of pictorial tableaux, disclose the hold which 
the chronicle plays had taken upon Shakespeare's 
imagination. 

The comedy " Love's Labour's Lost" betrays the 
influence of John Lyly, and of his famous " Euphues, 
the Anatomy of Wit," which appeared in London 
about the time Shakespeare left the Grammar School 
at Stratford. The writer was a young man of 
twenty-six years, a member of Magdalen College, 
Oxford, and extremely sensitive to the subtleties 

1 



THE FIRST FRUITS l6l 

and refinements of sentiment and language. His 
talent was neither deep nor vital, but he was one 
of those fortunate men who arrive on the scene at 
the very moment when their gifts receive the most 
liberal reenforcement from the passion, the convic- 
tion, or the taste of the hour. Lyly had little to 
say, but he was a sensitive instrument ready to the 
hand of his time, and his time made the most of 
him. He made himself the fashion of the decade 
by fastening as if by instinct on its affectations, 
excesses, and eccentricities of taste. The Renais- 
sance had made Europe, in intellectual interests at 
least, a community ; and intellectual impulses passed 
rapidly from one country to another. By virtue 
of her recovery of classical literature and of her 
creative energy, Italy was the leader of culture, the 
exponent of the new freedom and the higher taste. 
To Italy men turned for the models and standards 
of literary art, as later they turned to France for 
manners and dress. The Italians were still near 
enough to mediaeval ways and habits to find de- 
light in wiredrawn definitions, in distinctions so fine 
that they were almost invisible, and in allegories 
and symbolism. The schoolmen were quibblers by 
tradition and training, and quibbling passed on 
into polite society when the New Learning came, 
and became the pastime and amusement of the 
cultivated and fashionable. Directness of speech 
went out of fashion ; affectation of the most extreme 
type marked the man of superior refinement. Ped- 



l62 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



antry, quibbling, verbal juggling, the use of far- 
fetched similes and classical allusions, allegories and 
conceits, became the marks of elegance and culture. 
England, Spain, and France, eager to emulate the 
Italians in the newly opened field of scholarship and 

art, fastened, after 
the manner of imi- 
tators, upon the 
worst mannerisms 
of the Italians, 
imported them, 
and made them, if 
possible, more arti- 
ficial and extrava- 
gant. 

In every age, 
from the time of 
Surrey to that of 
Pater, English lit- 
erature has shown 
the presence of a 
tendency to pre- 
ciosity — an over- 
curious study of 

Engraving from the original by Zucchero. i i i mi 

words and a skill 
in using them somewhat too esoteric. In Shake- 
peare's youth this tendency was both a fashion and 
a passion, and John Lyly was its most successful 
exponent. He caught the rising tide, and was car- 
ried to a great height of popularity. " Euphues " was 




SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 



THE FIRST FRUITS 1 63 

a romance with a minimum of story interest and 
a maximum of reflections on love, manners, and 
morals, written in a style which was in the last 
degree ornate, elaborate, high-flown, and affected. 
There were no libraries or newspapers ; books were 
few; the modern journal of fashion and well- 
diluted romance had not been born ; time hung 
heavily on the hands of many women. Lyly knew 
his audience, and wrote for it with singular success. 
" Euphues," he wrote, " had rather lie shut in a 
lady's casket than open in a scholar's study." It 
found its way into a prodigious number of such 
caskets. The first part, originally published in 
1579, was reprinted nine times in fifty years. The 
word Euphuism remains a lasting memorial of a 
tendency which was felt by nearly all the writers of 
Shakespeare's time, and which has left traces in all 
our later literature. 

The Court found in this fastidious and extrava- 
gant style a highly developed language of homage 
and flattery, and men of affairs used it freely as 
poets. When Sir Walter Raleigh was forty years 
old and Queen Elizabeth sixty, the brilliant but 
unfortunate gentleman wrote these words from his 
cell in the Tower to Sir Robert Cecil : " While she 
was yet nigher at hand, that I might hear of her 
once in two or three days, my sorrows were the 
less ; but even now my heart is cast into the depth 
of all misery. I that was wont to behold her riding 
like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like 



164 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about 
her pure cheeks like a nymph ; sometime sitting in 
the shade like a goddess ; sometime singing like an 
angel; sometime playing like Orpheus. Behold the 
sorrow of this world ! Once amiss, hath bereaved 
me of all." 

There was much in Shakespeare's mind which 
not only made him sensitive to the attractions of 
Euphuism in certain of its aspects, but stimulated 
the play of his own ingenuity. When he gave free 
rein to his fancy, no writer surpassed him in quips, 
quibbles, conceits, puns, the use of images, allusions, 
and comparisons. He could be as whimsical, fan- 
tastic, and affected as the greatest literary fop of his 
time, and this not by the way of satire but for his 
own pleasure. His earlier plays are often disfigured 
by this vicious verbal dexterity; mere jugglery 
with words, which has no relation to art. " Love's 
Labour's Lost" was first published in Quarto form 
in 1598, with this title-page : "A Pleasant Conceited 
Comedy called Loues Labors Lost." Shakespeare's 
name appears for the first time on this title-page. 
The play was probably written several years earlier. 
It was played before the Queen during the Christ- 
mas festivities of 1597. It is a very characteristic 
piece of apprentice work ; full of prophecy of the 
method of the mature dramatist, but full also of 
evidences of immaturity. The young poet was try- 
ing his hand at comedy for the first time, and his 
keen perception of the extravagances, affectations, 



THE FIRST FRUITS 1 65 

and foibles of London life had already supplied him 
with a fund of material for satiric portrayal of con- 
temporary manners. The wealth of vitality and 
achievement which was characteristic of the age 
ran to all manner of excess and eccentricity of 
dress and speech. These were the most obvious 
aspects of the life he saw about him ; its deeper 
issues were still beyond his experience. The quick 
eye of the young observer took in at a glance the 
brilliance and show of the age, the dress of which 
was rich and elaborate to the last degree. " We 
use many more colours than are in the rainbow," 
says a contemporary English writer; "all the most 
light, garish, and unseemly colours that are in the 
world. . . . We wear more fantastical fashions 
than any nation under the sun doth, the French 
only excepted." 

The passion for travel was general among men of 
fashion, and western Europe was laid under con- 
tribution for novelties in manners, dress, and speech. 
" Farewell, monsieur traveller," writes Shakespeare ; 
" look you lisp, and wear strange suits ; disable all 
the benefits of your own country ; be out of love 
with your nativity, and almost chide God for mak- 
ing you that countenance you are, or I will scarce 
think you have swam in a gondola." The language 
of the day was as ornate and composite as the 
dress ; men spoke to one another in the most flow- 
ery speech, and the language was strained to fur- 
nish compliments for women. The allusions to the 



1 66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Queen read like fulsome flattery, but women of 
lesser rank received the same homage of exagger- 
ated and high-flown tribute. This splendour of 
bearing, often forced and unnatural, marked the 
endeavour of the age to live on a level with the 
greatness of life as it was brought home to the im- 
agination by heroic and romantic achievements. 
When she had become a wrinkled old woman, the 
Queen was discovered practising a new dance-step 
in the solitude of her closet ! 

The plot of " Love's Labour's Lost " is slight and 
of minor importance ; its sources have not been dis- 
covered; the play lives in its dialogue and satire. 
The influence of Lyly is apparent not only in the 
extravagance and fastidiousness of speech which 
are satirized with ready skill, but in the give and 
take of the conversation and the quickness of rep- 
artee which first appeared in the English drama 
in Lyly's court plays. 

hi this comedy of manners Shakespeare makes 
admirable sport of the high-flown speech of the 
time, touching with a light but sure hand its ambi- 
tious pedantry in Holofernes, the fantastic excesses 
of the latest fashion in learning in Armado, and the 
perils of Euphuism, as he recognized them in his 
own art, in Biron, who probably speaks the poet's 
mind when he puts by forever 

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, 
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation^ 
Figures pedanticaU 



THE FIRST FRUITS 1 67 

The youthfulness of the writer of the play is shown 
by the great preponderance of hnes that rhyme, 
and by its marked lyrical character, which stamps it 
as the work of a brilliant poet rather than of an 
experienced dramatist. Three sonnets and a song- 
are introduced, not because they are necessary parts 
of the drama, but because they are the natural 
forms of expression for a young poet ; and Mr.' 
Pater has called attention to the fact that the open- 
ing speech on the immortality of fame, spoken by 
the King, and the more striking passages spoken 
by Biron, have " something of the monumental 
style of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and are not without 
their conceits of thought and expression." 

The stock figures with which the stage was 
familiar are prominent in the play; the chief actors 
are sketched with a free hand rather than carefully 
drawn and strongly individualized after the poet's 
later manner; and the play contains several charac- 
ters which, in the light of later plays, are seen to 
be first studies of some of the most notable por- 
traits of riper years. The note of youthfulness is 
distinct also in the extravagance of speech which 
runs through it, and which was not only satirical 
but full of attractiveness for the poet. Indeed, the 
comedy may be regarded as an attempt on the 
poet's part to free himself from artistic peril by 
giving his mind, on its dexterous side, full play. 
The early ripening of artistic instinct into artistic 
knowledge is evidenced by the discernment of the 



1 68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

danger and the well-devised remedy. Biron inter- 
prets the young poet's self-consciousness as an 
artist clearly and decisively; he shows us Shake- 
speare's insight into the methods and means of 
securing the freest expression of his thought, and 
his deliberate selection of right approaches to his 
art and his deliberate rejection of the most seduc- 
tive errors of his time. In this comedy his mind 
was at play ; its natural agility, alertness, keenness, 
love of paradox, delight in the dexterous handling 
of words, were allowed full scope, and the disease 
of his time came fully to the surface and never 
again seriously attacked him. With his magical 
quickness of mental action and command of lan- 
guage, he might have succumbed to the temptation 
to be a marvellously keen and adroit manipulator of 
words instead of a great creative artist ; he might 
easily have been a fastidious writer for experts in 
the bizarre, the curious, and the esoteric in style, 
instead of becoming the full-voiced, large-minded, 
deep-hearted poet of humanity. This peril he 
escaped by discerning it and, in the very act of 
satirizing it, giving his mind opportunity to indulge 
a passion which all men of artistic feeling shared. 
The play dealt more freel}^ with contemporaneous 
events and was more deeply embedded in contem- 
porary conditions than any other of his dramas ; 
for this reason it became very popular with Eliza- 
bethan audiences, but is the least interesting of 
Shakespeare's works to modern readers. There is 



THE FIRST FRUITS 



169 



in it a preponderance of the local and a minimum 
of the universal elements. 

But Shakespeare could not satirize the extrava- 
gances and follies of his time without suggesting 
the larger view of life which was always in his 
thought; he could not touch the smallest detail 
of manners without bringing the man into view. 
In this early and 
sportive work, with 
its incessant and 
often metallic fence 
of words, the young 
poet disclosed his 
resolute grasp of 
the realities of life 
as opposed to pass- 
ing theories and 
individual experi- 
ments. The arti- 
ficial asceticism to 
which the King 
commits himself 
and his court, with 
its fasts, vigils, studies, and exclusion of women, is a 
gay but futile attempt to interfere with normal hu- 
man emotions, needs, and habits ; it breaks down 
under the first strain to which it is subjected, and is 
driven out of beclouded minds with the gayest of 
womanly laughter and the keenest of womanly wit. 
The satire of the play assails false ideas of the place 




THOMAS NASHE. 
From an early pen drawing. 



lyo 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



of knowledge, false uses of speech, and false con- 
ceptions of life ; it discloses the mind of the poet 
already at work on the problem which engaged him 
during the whole of his productive life, and in the 
working out of which all the pla3^s are involved : 
the problem of the right relation of the individual 
to the moral order, to the family, and to the State. 
The breadth of view and sanity of temper which 
are at once the most striking characteristics of 
Shakespeare's mind and the secret of the reality 
and range of his art find in " Love's Labour's Lost " 
their earliest illustration. And in this play are to 
be found also the earliest examples of his free and 
expressive character-drawing; for Biron and Rosa- 
line are preliminary studies for Benedict and Bea- 
trice ; the play of wit throughout the drama predicts 
" Much Ado About Nothing " ; the love-making of 
Armado and Jaquenetta is the earliest example of 
a by-play of comedy which reaches perfection in 
" As You Like It." As a piece of apprentice work 
"Love's Labour's Lost" is quite invaluable; so 
clearly does it reveal the early processes of the 
poet's mind and his first selection of themes, 
motives, human interests, and artistic methods. 

" The Comedy of Errors " belongs to this period 
of tentative work, and is interestino; as showing 
Shakespeare's familiarity with the traditional form 
of comedy and as marking the point of his depar- 
ture from it. It was first published in the Folio of 
1623, but it was presented as early as the Christ- 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
The statue on the Gower Memorial at Stratford-on-Avoa. 



172 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

mas season of 1594, in the hall of Gray's Inn; and 
its production was accompanied by considerable 
disorder in the audience, which must have been 
composed chiefly of benchers and their guests. 
This disturbance is mentioned by a chronicler in 
the same year in these words : " After much sport, 
a Comedy of Errors was played by the players ; so 
that night began and continued to the end, in noth- 
ing but confusion and errors ; whereupon it was 
ever afterwards called the 'Night of Errors.'" The 
main, although not the only, source of the plot was 
the Menaechmi of Plautus, in which the Latin come- 
dian develops the almost unlimited possibility of 
blunders which lies in mistakes of identity — then 
as now a popular device with playwrights and story- 
tellers. Shakespeare may have read the comedy in 
the original, or in a translation by William Warner, 
which was not published until the year following the 
presentation of the " Comedy of Errors," but which 
was probably in existence in manuscript much ear- 
lier. In this form many pieces of prose and verse 
which later became famous were passed from hand 
to hand; writing was practised chiefly for the pleas- 
ure of the writer and his friends, and publication was 
secondary, and usually an afterthought. 

In turning to Plautus, Shakespeare paid tribute 
to the classical tradition which dominated Italy and 
was never without witnesses in England ; a tradi- 
tion which cannot be disregarded without serious 
loss of artistic education, nor accepted without 



THE FIRST FRUITS I 73 

sacrifice of original power. Whenever the classical 
tradition has secured complete possession of the 
stage, a new and vital drama has been impossible ; 
whenever it has been entirely discarded, unregu- 
lated individualism has degenerated into all manner 
of eccentricities of plot and form. With character- 
istic insight, Shakespeare escaped both dangers ; 
he knew the classical manner, and was not unre- 
sponsive to its order, balance, and genius for pro- 
portion, but he refused to be enslaved or hampered 
by it. English tragedy had secured complete free- 
dom, and was fast becoming the richest and most 
adequate expression of the English genius; Eng- 
lish comedy had been fighting the same battle, and 
" The Comedy of Errors " marks the decisive tri- 
umph of the national genius. In this play Shake- 
speare conformed to the ancient requirements that 
the action should take place in a single day and 
within the limits of a single locality — the time- 
honoured unities ; but he changed the classical into 
the romantic spirit by the introduction of greater 
complexity of characters and therefore of greater 
perplexity of plot, and by the infusion of a vein of 
pathos which is alien to the Latin comedy. 

The ease with which the difficult plot is handled 
shows that Shakespeare had already gone far in his 
education as a playwright. A comparison with 
Plautus's play brings out his essential and funda- 
mental cleanness of imagination. He was a man of 
his time, and his time was incredibly frank and 



174 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

coarse of speech ; but whenever he could escape 
into a purer speech he rarely lost the opportunity. 
The coarseness and occasional obscenity in his 
work were the dust of the road along which he 
travelled ; among the men of his age and voca- 
tion he was singularly refined in taste and clean 
in speech. Moral sanity is one of Shakespeare's 
most characteristic qualities ; he is ethically sound 
throughout the entire body of his work. His 
insight holds him true at all points to the inexora- 
ble play of law. He offends the taste of a more 
fastidious age, but he is far more wholesome than 
many modern writers of irreproachable vocabulary. 
On this whole matter Coleridge has spoken the 
final word : — 

" Shakespeare has no innocent adulteries, no inter- 
esting incests, no virtuous vice ; he never renders 
that amiable which relioion and reason alike teach 
us to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb of vir- 
tue like Beaumont and Fletcher, the Kotzebues of 
the day. Shakespeare's fathers are roused by 
ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness ; 
in him, in short, the affections are wounded in 
those points in which all may, nay, must, feel. Let 
the morality of Shakespeare be contrasted with that 
of the writers of his own or the succeeding age, or 
of those of the present day who boast of their supe- 
riority in this respect. No one can dispute that the 
result of such a comparison is altogether in favour of 
Shakespeare ; even the letters of women of high 
rank in his age were often coarser than his own writ- 
ings. If he occasionally disgusts a keen sense of deli- 
cacy, he never injures the mind; he neither excites 



THE FIRST FRUITS 1 75 

nor flatters passion, in order to degrade the subject 
of it ; he does not use the faulty thing for a faulty pur- 
pose, nor carry on warfare against virtue, by caus- 
ing wickedness to appear as no wickedness, through 
the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfor- 
tunate. In Shakespeare vice never walks as in twi- 
light ; nothing is purposely out of its place ; he in- 
verts not the order of nature and propriety — does 
not make every magistrate a drunkard or a glutton, 
nor every poor man meek, humane, and temperate." 

In "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" another \ 
tie with the past and another point of departure 
are discovered. The play seems to have been 
derived mainly from the Portuguese novelist and 
poet Montemayor, whose " Story of the Shepherd- 
ess Filismena " was well known in English throug^h 
various translations of the pastoral romance of 
which it was part, and is reminiscent of the plays 
based chiefly on Italian love-stories which were 
popular before Shakespeare's time. This comedy 
of love and friendship, conceived in the romantic 
spirit, is slight and ineffective in construction, but 
full of beauty in detail. It is the work of a poet 
who was not yet a dramatist. There are lines in it 
which predict the magical verses of the later plays ; 
Julia and Lucetta are hasty, preliminary studies of 
Portia and Nerissa; while Launce and Speed are the 
forerunners of a long succession of serving-men 
whose conceits, drolleries, whims, and far-fetched , 
similes place them among the most original of the ' 
poet's creations. 



176 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's apprentice work, even when it was 
limited to adaptation or recasting of existing mate- 
rials, is clearly discriminated from his more mature 
work both by its structure and its style : but it is 
tentative rather than imitative, and full of germs 
which were to find perfection of growth in the 
dramas of a later period. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE POETIC PERIOD 

During the decade between 1590 and 1600 
Shakespeare's productivity was continuous, and 
covered a wide field of poetic expression ; the nine- 
teen or twenty plays which were written during 
this period included eight or nine comedies, one 
tragedy, and a group of historical dramas. To 
these must be added the two long lyrical pieces 
which bear his name, the few short pieces incor- 
porated in " The Passionate Pilgrim," " A Lover's 
Complaint," " The Phoenix and the Turtle," and 
the lyrical poem on friendship and love which took 
the form of a sequence of one hundred and fifty- 
four sonnets. The apprentice work of the young 
dramatist may be said to end with the creation of 
the " Midsummer Night's Dream " and " Romeo 
and Juliet," though in neither of these beautiful 
dramas does his genius reach full maturity. At 
the end of six or seven years after his arrival in 
London he had become sufficiently knowm and 
successful to awaken envy ; he had tried various 
dramatic forms with success ; he had learned the 
practical side of play-writing, and he had gone a 
long way towards mastering its theory; he had 
N 177 



178 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

become an actor of intelligence, if not of marked 
gifts ; and he had established himself in his pro- 
fession. 

It must have been a period of deep and eager 
spiritual striving and unfolding. Some of the 
poet's devout students in Germany, to whom his 
fame owes much, and who have enriched Shake- 
spearian scholarship for all time with the fruits of 
loving study and of fruitful insight, find evidence 
that during this time the poet passed through a 
storm-and-stress period. There are many indica- 
tions, however, that this phase of the dramatist's 
spiritual life came later, and was coincident with 
tragic events which touched him to the quick. 
His earlier work shows a sunny nature, a sensitive 
mind, a gay and eager interest in many forms of 
experience and art. 

If "Titus Andronicus" was written by Shake- 
speare, and at the beginning of his career, it was 
so purely external and imitative, so evidently out- 
side the dramatist's life, that it does not count as a 
document in his spiritual history. The extraordi- 
nary accuracy of description, the resolute and 
unfailing grasp of the concrete, which stamp the 
very earliest work from his hand, show him at the 
start more absorbed in seeing than in meditating, 
more engrossed by the marvellous spectacle of the 
world than concerned with its spiritual order. It 
is true, he could not see without thinking, and 
Shakespeare was always of a meditative temper; 



THE POETIC PERIOD 



179 



but his first contact with the world called forth his 
full power of observation, and the emphasis of his 
thought fell, for a time, outside his own personality. 

As he saw many sides of experience, so he felt 
the charm of various masters, and was drawn 
toward Lyly, 
Peele, and 
Marlowe ; he 
came under 
the Italian in- 
fluence, and 
he was not in- 
different to 
classical mod- 
els and ima- 
gery. Neither 
in his work nor 
in his con- 
sciousness had 
he come into 
full possession 
of himself. 

The poet in 
him took prec- 
edence, in the order of development, of the drama- 
tist ; and it is as a poet that his earliest artistic suc- 
cesses were secured. From the beginning he had 
that freshness of feeling which is the peculiar and 
characteristic quality of the artist of every kind ; he 
had also the sensitive imagination and the ear for 




MICHAEL DRAYTON. 



From an old and rare pen-drawing. 



I So WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

melody. The world was reflected in his mind as 
in a magical rhirror; its large outlines and its more 
delicate shadings lying clear and luminous before 
him. But he did not fully discern as yet the 
interior relations of spirit and form, the interde- 
pendence of individuality and the institutional 
order, the reaction of the act upon the actor, the 
unfolding of personality through action, the inevi- 
table infolding of the tragic temperament by the 
tragic circumstance, and the final identification of 
character with destiny. The deeper insights, the 
creative grasp of the forces of life, and the master- 
ful revelation of the laws which govern them 
through all the processes of history, which were 
to make him the first of dramatists, were growing 
within him, but they were not yet in possession of 
his spirit and his art ; he was still primarily a poet. 
The earlier plays do not reveal the evolution of 
character, the action and reaction of circumstances 
and forces within the circle of movement, the 
subordination of incident to action, and the hus- 
banding of action in character, which give the 
dramas of his maturity their reality and authority. 
The poet was concerned chiefly with the beauty, 
the variety, and the humour of the spectacle. He 
was full of the charm of the show of things and of 
pleasure in the action of his own mind. He 
delighted in rhyme for its own sake ; in classical 
allusions, not because, like torches held in the air, 
they illumine the path of his thought, but because 



THE POETIC PERIOD l8l 

they please his fancy ; he gave his mind Hcense in 
the use of puns, conceits, verbal dexterities of every 
kind ; he pushed wit to the very limits of its 
rational meaning, and sometimes beyond ; he 
exhausted imagery in the endeavour to drain it 
of its suggestiveness instead of leaving it to do its 
own work with the imagination. He kept comedy 
and tragedy apart, and simplified the drama at the 
expense of its manifold and deeper meaning. His 
eye was marvellously keen and his hand magically 
skilful, but he was not yet the master of the 
secrets of art and life ; he was an ardent and 
impressionable young poet, playing with the prob- 
lems of experience rather than closing with them 
in a life-and-death struggle, presenting their lighter 
aspects externally rather than penetrating to their 
heart and laying bare the fates which sleep in 
motive and passion. 

It is easy to imagine the eager joy of the young 
playwright when he became conscious of the pos- 
session of the poet's insight and faculty. In his 
ardent imagination the great new world of the 
Renaissance, with the recovery of classical art in 
one hemisphere and the discovery of America in 
the other, lay in all its splendour of spiritual and 
material suggestiveness ; and in this vast territory, 
in which the human spirit seemed to have acquired 
a new freedom as well as an enlarged authority, he 
came swiftly to feel at home. He had the con- 
sciousness of great powers ; the sonnets show that 



1^2 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



clearly enough. A member of a profession which 
was under .the ban not only of institutional religion 
but of society, and excluded from the chief paths of 
preferment and fame, he had, nevertheless, the 
supreme joy of discovering the beauty of the world 
and the infinite variety of human experience and 
fate, and of giving this manifold loveliness and 

moving show 
of life order, 
consistency, 
and form. 

The c o n- 
sciousness of 
the possession 
of creative 
power is never 
born in an 
hour ; it comes 
like the break- 
ing of the 
day ; but, from 
the first gleam 
of light on the horizon, it stirs all the sleeping 
forces of the nature, and the adolescence of genius 
breeds an exaltation, an enthusiasm, a glow along 
the horizons of the future, born of a sudden awaken- 
ing of passion, imagination, thought, and physical 
energy. To the young poet the world is as full of 
gods as it was to the myth-makers, and light flashes 
from it as if the order and splendour of the universe 




EDMUND SPENSER. 



THE POETIC PERIOD 1 83 

were being disclosed for the first time. For adoles- 
cence is the individual and personal discovery of 
life and the world ; the young explorer is as much 
alone in his experience and exaltation of spirit as if 
a thousand thousand earlier discoverers had not 
traversed the same seas and made the same journeys 
before him. 

In " Henry VI." and " Titus Andronicus," if he 
did more than touch the latter play in the most 
perfunctory way, Shakespeare was doing purely 
experimental apprentice work ; in the " Comedy of 
Errors " he indulged his exuberant humour to the 
full ; in " Love's Labour's Lost " he lightly but 
keenly satirized the foibles and extravagances of his 
time in learning, speech, and style ; in " The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona " he made a slender plot 
bear the weight of his dawning imagination in 
image and phrase ; in " Venus and Adonis " and 
" The Rape of Lucrece " he surrendered himself to 
the lyric impulse ; and in the " Midsummer Night's 
Dream " and " Romeo and Juliet " his poetic genius 
rose to its full height. In these two dramas, which 
belong in the front rank of English poetry, fancy 
and imagination are seen in that creative play with 
the materials of experience and of ideality which 
fashions worlds as substantial as that on which we 
live, and yet touched with a beauty of form and a 
lucidity of meaning which we search for in vain in 
the world of reality. 

The stages of Shakespeare's growth as a poet are 



184 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

as clearly marked as the stages of his growth as a 
dramatist. Between " Venus and Adonis " and 
" Romeo and Juliet " there intervened several years 
of experience, observation, experimentation, and 
unfolding. The freedom of movement, the fulness 
of imagination, the firm grasp of subject, and the 
masterly handling of material of all kinds which 
are characteristic of the later work did not come at 
call in Shakespeare's case; he was subject to the 
law of development and dependent upon education 
for the full possession of himself and the free use of 
his powers. In the earlier poems there are 
passages of unsurpassed beauty, but in construc- 
tion and style the hand of the apprentice is mani- 
fest. As he had gone to school to the older 
playwrights when he set about the business of 
writing plays, so he went to school to the older 
poets when he began to write poetry. The spell 
of the classical ideal of beauty was on all sensitive 
minds when Shakespeare was young; those who 
emancipated themselves from the classical tradition 
of poetic and dramatic form did not detach them- 
selves from the poetic conceptions and the beautiful 
world of imagery which Europe recovered in the 
Renaissance. The joy of release from mediaeval 
rigidity and repression found its natural expression 
in reverence for the models and standards of classi- 
cal art. Man had been born again into conscious 
freedom; personality had once more secured space 
and light for development ; to the monotony of the 



THE POETIC PERIOD 



185 



type in the arts had succeeded the range and 
variety of individuality ; love of nature and joy in 
her presence had returned ; confidence in the 
human spirit had been restored when the shadows 
of a world lying under the ban of heaven had been 
banished ; an immense exhilaration of imagination, 
a great libera- 
tion of per- 
sonal force, 
were the fruits 
of the freedom 
of mind and 
soul which the 
Renaissanc e 
secured. Look- 
ing back across 
the Middle 
Ages, associ- 
ated in the 
minds of the 
men of the new 
time with spir- 
itual repres- 
sion and intel- 
lectual bondage, the classical world lay clear, beauti- 
ful, and free in a light that was almost dazzling after 
the long gloom of medievalism. It is true mediseval- 
ism had its lights, its humour, its beauty of devotion, 
its deep-rooted and noble art ; but the men of the 
Renaissance were in reaction against its repression 




WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGH, PRIME MINISTER OF 
QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

From the original painting at Hatfield House. 



1 86 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of natural instincts, its curtailment of natural 
activities, and they saw the classical world in the 
high light of sharp contrast. That world is mar- 
vellously beautiful to the imagination of the nine- 
teenth century, which constantly recalls it in every 
art and strives with passionate eagerness to recover 
its lost perfection of taste, of order, of w^orkman- 
ship ; to the imagination of the sixteenth century 
it was the golden age of the arts and of the spirit 
which fashions them — a lost but immortal world 
of freedom, joy, beauty, and creativeness. 

Shakespeare had known this older world from 
boyhood. He was not subjugated by it, as were 
many of his contemporaries, for beneath the sensi- 
tive surface of his mind there was a vigorous and 
self-sustaining individuality ; but he felt its spell and 
discerned its educational uses. He knew his Ovid 
early enough to people the Forest of Arden with 
the older dreams of poetry ; but it was .characteris- 
tic of his genius that he did not confuse the one 
with the other. In " Venus and Adonis " the orreat 
passages are not those which describe the beautiful 
goddess or the shy and radiant youth, but those 
which describe figures, landscapes, and incidents 
which he must have seen or known in the country 
about Stratford in his youth. 

His earliest poetic experiments were in the classi- 
cal vein ; for he knew the classical background of 
modern poetry as intimately as did Keats. He 
began his poetic career under the tutelage of one of 



THE POETIC PERIOD 1 87 

the most imaginative of the Roman poets. In the 
early summer of 1593, with the imprint of his friend 
and fellow-townsman, Richard Field, on the title- 
page, Shakespeare made his first appeal to the read- 
ing public of his time, and his first venture in what 
he and his contemporaries recognized as literature. 
He had already made some reputation as a play- 
wright ; but plays were not then regarded as litera- 
ture. Columbus died in ignorance that he had 
discovered a new world, so possessed was his mind 
with the conviction that he had touched the out- 
lying islands of Asia. Shakespeare died in igno- 
rance of the fact that he had made himself the 
foremost man in literature, so far apart in his 
thought and the thought of his time were plays 
and literature. The text of " Venus and Adonis " 
was carefully read, and is notably accurate ; it was 
printed under the eye of the poet. The plays were 
either stolen or published in many cases without 
authorization, and are, for that reason, full of inac- 
curacies and difficult or questionable passages. 

It is interesting to recall the fact, already re- 
ported, that four years earlier Richard Field had 
brought out the " Metamorphoses " of Ovid ; and 
it is also worth recalling that in the year before the 
appearance of the " first heir " of Shakespeare's 
invention his father had made an appraisal of the 
goods of Field's father in Stratford. 

" I know not how I shall offend," wrote Shake- 
speare in the dedication of the poem to the Earl 



1 88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of Southampton, " in dedicating my unpolished 
lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will 
censure me for choosing so strong a prop to sup- 
port so weak a burden, only if your Honour seem 
but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and 
vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have 
honoured you with some graver labour. But if the 
first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall 
be sorry it had so noble a godfather." Shake- 
speare was twenty-nine years old, and the Earl of 
Southampton was in his twentieth year — a young 
man of brilliant parts and of striking beauty ; well 
educated ; with a fortune more than adequate to 
his rank ; a great favourite in the Court circle ; a 
lover of literature and of the drama ; a generous 
and appreciative friend of men of letters ; and a 
representative man in a great and brilliant period. 
The two young men had been brought together 
by those manifold affinities which in youth ripen 
casual acquaintance swiftly into devoted friend- 
ship ; the glow of the time was on them both, 
although the dawn of the noble was to be quenched 
in the darkness of premature night, while that of 
the playwright broadened into a day which is likely 
to know no shadow of evening. 

There has been wide difference of opinion re- 
garding Shakespeare's meaning in describing the 
poem as " the first heir " of his invention. It has 
been urged that the words should be taken literally, 
and that the poem was probably composed at Strat- 



THE POETIC PERIOD 1 89 

ford and carried to London, as Johnson carried, 
almost two centuries later, the tragedy of " Irene." 
Or the poet may have meant that it was his first 
attempt to write lyrical or narrative verse. When 
it appeared, no plays of his had been printed ; the 
plague was raging in London, the theatres were 
closed, and the poem may have been composed at 
this time. It belongs, in any event, to his earliest 
productive period, and is the first fruit of his con- 
scious artistic life. 

" Venus and Adonis " shows plainly the influence 
of Ovid, as do some of the earlier plays ; but it is 
free from mere imitation. Shakespeare felt the 
charm of the Latin poet, and reflected that charm, 
but he used his materials with freedom and individ- 
ual skill. Ovid was followed only so far as Shake- 
speare found it profitable to follow. The older 
poet had told the story of the love of Venus for 
Adonis when Cupid's arrow pierced her by acci- 
dent ; how the goddess forsook all and followed 
him ; how she warned him against his favourite 
pastime of hunting wild beasts ; how she beguiled 
him in shady places with the tale of the help she 
gave Hippomenes when he outran Atalanta, and 
then, as a penalty for his ingratitude, brought bitter 
misfortune upon them ; how the hunted boar gave 
Adonis his death-wound ; how Venus brought the 
anemone — the sensitive and delicate wind-flower 
— from his blood. 

On the framework of this classical tale the young 



IQO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

poet wrought his careful, well-compacted, and thor- 
oughly constructed poem. There is no reason to 
doubt that he had read the story without the aid 
of a translation, although Golding's version ap- 
peared in his childhood. The story was passionate, 
and the young poet did nothing to disguise or 
diminish the passion ; on the contrary, he height- 
ened it by setting the coldness of Adonis in sharp 
contrast with it. The poem is too frankly passion- 
ate and too naked for modern taste ; since it was 
written Puritan influence, by its tremendous em- 
phasis on righteousness, has compelled us to strike 
a balance between the freedom of the Greek genius 
and the moral insight of the Hebrew spirit, and the 
problem of modern art is to harmonize freedom, 
beauty, and joy with moral sanity, order, and 
power. The love of beauty and the frank abandon- 
ment to its charms, which were characteristic of 
the Renaissance, are the dominant notes of this 
poem of a very young poet who was under the 
spell of the Renaissance spirit. It offends by its 
frankness rather than by its warmth; for it is curi- 
ously cool and restrained in tone. It is full of 
striking lines, but the subject does not seem to 
inflame the poet's imagination ; he works as calmly 
as if he were not dealing with the most dangerous 
stuff in the world. His personality is as com- 
pletely hidden as in the plays ; the treatment is 
wholly objective. " Venus and Adonis " belongs 
to the same period as Marlowe's glowing version 



THE POETIC PERIOD 



191 



of the memorable story of " Hero and Leander," 
but there could hardly be a greater contrast than 
that which is presented by the two poems. In 
Marlowe the current is deep and swift, and bears 
one on in a tumultuous rush of passion ; in " Venus 
and Adonis " the movement is deliberate and lei- 
surely, and the genius of the poet is seen, not in his 




OLD PALACE, WHITEHALL. 
From a print engraved for Lambert's " History of London." 

general treatment, but in the recurring pictures and 
descriptions with which the poem abounds. In the 
marvellous exactness of his drawing the accuracy 
of his observation is shown, and in the mellow 
euphony of many of its lines the magic of his later 
style is predicted. The hunted hare is so true to 
life that he must have been studied upon some 
hill about Stratford; and all the glimpses of nature 
are touches of genius. The noble realism of the 



192 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

dramatist is predicted again and again in lines 
which are not only suffused with beauty, but cut 
in outline as clearly as with a graver's tool. 

" The Rape of Lucrece " appeared in the follow- 
ing year with the imprint of Richard Field, and 
the announcement that it was to be sold at "the 
sign of the White Greyhound in Paules Church- 
yard"; a neighbourhood which has been haunted by 
publishers and authors from that day until the 
last decade, when the makers of books have been 
seeking quarters in other sections of London. Ovid 
was still in the young poets mind, although the 
pathetic story of Lucretia's fidelity had long been 
familiar in prose and verse. " Lucretia," Wharton 
tells us, " was the grand example of conjugal fidelity 
throughout the Gothic ages." Chaucer had set 
her in noble company in his " Legend of Good 
Women," and Sidney had recalled her in his 
beautiful " Apologie." Other English poets had 
felt the poetic power of the Roman matron's purity, 
and the theme had not escaped the attention of 
the balladists. The seven-line stanza in which the 
poem is written had been brought from France by 
Chaucer, and its capacity for serious subjects had 
been developed before Shakespeare used it. The 
Earl of Southampton's name appears on the page 
of dedication, as in the " Venus and Adonis " of 
the previous year; but the friendship between the 
two men had apparently ripened in the intervening 
months. The language of dedications is rarely to 



THE POETIC PERIOD 1 93 

be taken literally, and in Shakespeare's time, as in 
Johnson's, it was more notable for adulation than 
for sincerity ; but, although Shakespeare uses the 
speech of the courtier in addressing his friend, 
there is a note of sincerity in both dedications. 
The second is more intimate and affectionate than 
its predecessor. " The love I dedicate to your 
Lordship is without end," he writes ; "... the 
warrant I have of your Honourable disposition, 
not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it 
assured of acceptance." 

The subject would have permitted the most in- 
tense dramatic feeling, but, like the story in " Venus 
and Adonis," it is presented not only with entire 
objectivity but with a certain coolness and aloofness ; 
as if the poet had chosen his theme rather than 
been chosen by it. His imagination was stimulated 
but not possessed by it ; it is an impressive poetic 
exercise from the hand of a great poet rather than 
an original and characteristic expression of poetic 
genius. There are vivid impressions, scenes that 
stand out as if cut with the chisel, striking reflec- 
tions, and, at intervals, the inimitable Shakespearian 
note, that magical harmony of sound and sense 
that rings like a bell in one's memory : 

For Sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell, 

Once set on ringing with his own weight goes. 

But the poet is practising, not creating; learning 
his art, not enlarging it. It is in detached passages, 



194 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

not in the completed work, that we must look for 
the poet of " Romeo and Juliet." In " The Rape 
of Lucrece " there is, however, a distinct advance 
in seriousness and dignity; there is not only greater 
ease in the use of verse, but there is finer insight 
and higher ideality : 

Who loves chaste hfe, there's Lucrece for a teacher : 

Coleridge laid his finger on the characteristic quality 
of "Venus and Adonis " when he pointed out the 
fact that the reader of the poem is told nothing ; 
he sees and hears everything. The dramatic element 
was too pronounced in Shakespeare's nature, even 
at a time when the poetic impulse was in the as- 
cendant, to permit of the highest success in purely 
narrative verse ; in any event, he did not stamp 
these poems with that finality of form which he 
put on many of the plays and on a large group of 
the sonnets. The earliest pieces of his original 
work betray the immaturity of his genius and art; 
they show him under the spell of the Renaissance 
spirit ; they deal with passion without being pas- 
sionate. Their significance in the history of his 
development has been discerned by Coleridge in 
a passage memorable in Shakespearian criticism : 

" The Venus and Adonis did not perhaps allow 
the display of the deeper passions. But the story 
of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand, their 
intensest workings. And yet we find in Shake- 
speare's management of the tale neither pathos nor 



THE POETIC PERIOD 1 95 

any other dramatic quality. There is the same 
minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, 
in the same vivid colours, inspired by the same 
impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and 
contracting with the same activity of the assimila- 
tive and of the modifying faculties ; and with a yet 
larger display, and a wider range of knowledge and 
reflection : and lastly, with the same perfect domin- 
ion, often domination, over the whole world of lan- 
guage. What, then, shall we say ? Even this, that 
Shakespeare, no mere child of nature, no automaton 
of genius, no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed 
by the spirit, not possessing it, first studied patiently, 
meditated deeply, understood minutely, till know- 
ledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself 
to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to 
that stupendous power, by which he stands alone, 
with no equal or second in his own class ; to that 
power which seated him on one of the two glory- 
smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Mil- 
ton as his compeer, not rival." 

It is impossible, even in work distinctly sensuous 
in imagery, not to discern the idealist in Shake- 
speare. Dealing with the physical aspects of beauty 
in " Venus and Adonis," he is bent on the ideal 
beauty. With Plato and Michael Angelo, he is 
driven by the appearance of beauty to that invisible 
and eternal reality which is at once the inspiration 
and justification of religion and poetry. In his 
earliest thought the future writer of the sonnets 
discerned the reality of which all beautiful faces, 
aspects, and images are the passing reflections, the 
fleeting remembrances and prophecies. 



196 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The publication of these poems gave Shakespeare 
another constituency and a new group of friends, 
and brought him recognition and reputation. In 
the eight years which followed its appearance no 
less than seven editions of " Venus and Adonis " 
were issued, and " The Rape of Lucrece" was in 
its fifth edition when the poet died. In exchanging 
the writing of plays for the writing of poems the 
poet passed from an occupation which shared to a 
considerable extent the social indifference or con- 
tempt which attached to the actor's profession to one 
in which gentlemen were proud to engage. He 
became, for the time being, a man of letters ; he 
thought of readers rather than of hearers ; he gave 
his work the care and finish of intentional author- 
ship. He had become known to the theatre-going 
people as an actor of skill and an adapter of plays 
of uncommon parts ; he now became known as a 
poet. Writing four years later, Richard Barnfield 
comments on " the honey-flowing vein " of Shake^ 
speare. 

Whose " Venus " and whose " Lucrece," sweet and chaste, 
Thy name in fame's immortal book have plac't ; 

and in an oft-quoted passage, which appeared in the 
same year, Francis Meres, in his " Comparative 
Discourse of our English Poets with the 'Greek, 
Latin, and Italian Poets," uses these striking words, 
expressive at once of the impression which Shake- 
speare had made upon his contemporaries and of 



THE POETIC PERIOD 1 97 

his association in their minds with the Latin poet 
upon whom he had drawn freely in both poems : 
" As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in 
Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives 
in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare ; 
witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sug- 
ared sonnets among his private friends. ..." A 
year later John Weever calls Shakespeare " honie- 
tongued." At Cambridge in the same year St. John's 
College heard a fellow-playwright declare, " I'll wor- 
ship sweet Mr. Shakespeare, and, to honour him, 
will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillow." 
That Shakespeare had become so well known that 
the readers of his poems and the hearers of his 
plays were divided on the question of the relative 
importance of his works is shown, a little later, by 
these words of Gabriel Harvey written, Mr. Gollancz 
tells us, on the fly-leaf of a Chaucer folio: "The 
younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's 
Venus and Adonis ; but his Lucrece, and his Tragedy 
of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to 
please the wiser sort." These references, and 
others of similar import, show the young poet with 
the earliest light of fame upon him. Life and art, 
friends and fame, opportunity and work, were al- 
ready his. And he had been in London less than 
fourteen years. 

The poets of his own time — Drayton, Brooke, 
Weever — were under the spell of his genius; and 
there is good reason to believe Spenser was think- 



198 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 




LONDON IN 1543. FROM WESTMINSTER TO 



ing of him when he wrote In " Colin Clouts come 
home againe " : 

And then, though last not least in Aetion ; 

A gentler shepheard may no where be found, 
Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, 

Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound. 

In the Christmas season of 1594 he acted at 
court before Queen Elizabeth, and the fact that his 
plays were repeatedly presented in her presence 
indicates her liking for his work and her purpose 
to show him favour. A playwright upon whose 
words crowds hung in the Rose and the Globe; 
whose great passages were recited again and again 
in the palaces at Greenwich, Richmond, and White- 
chapel ; whose poems, having passed from hand to 
hand among his friends, appeared in rapidly sue- 



THE POETIC PERIOD 



199 




BISHOPSGATE AND LEADENHALL. (See also on the next page.) 



ceeding editions ; to whom many contemporary 
writers paid glowing tribute ; and who counted 
among his friends some of the most briUiant and 
influential men of his time, can hardly be regarded 
as having escaped the notice of his age, or as so 
obscure as to raise the question of his authorship 
of the work which bears his name. 

The lyrical period in the growth of Shakespeare's 
mind and art culminated about 1597 or 1598, and 
bore its highest fruits in two dramas which hold a 
place by themselves ; plays essentially poetic in 
quality and form, and singularly complete in their 
disclosure of the resources of his imagination and 
his art. The tragic story of Romeo and Juliet had 
attracted him at a very early date ; there is evi- 
dence that he was brooding over this pathetic tale 



200 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 




LONDON IN 1543. FROM THE TOWER TO GREENWICH PALACE. 
This and the two preceding illustrations are after an old print in the Bodleian Library. 



in 1 591, although the play, in the form in which it 
has come down to us, probably did not appear 
before 1596. It was published in quarto form, 
probably without the dramatist's consent, in the fol- 
lowing year, and the sub-title declared that it had 
been publicly played often and with great applause. 
The poet found the material for his first tragedy in 
several quarters, and drew upon these sources with 
the freedom characteristic of the time. The story 
has been traced as far back as the Greek romances 
of the early Christian centuries, but long before 
Shakespeare's imagination fastened upon it the 
congenial soil of Italy had given it new and more 
vigorous life. The tragic fate of the two lovers 
who were destined to become the typical lovers of 



THE POETIC PERIOD 20I 

Western literature was set forth at length by Luigi 
da Porto in a novel published about 1535 ; it had 
been sketched sixty years earlier by Masuccio, and 
it reappeared in later years in various forms; its 
popularity and its rich material tempting several 
succeeding story-tellers. Chief among these was 
Bandello, who made it the theme of a uovellam the 
decade before Shakespeare's birth. Two years 
before that event, an English poet, Arthur Brooke, 
told it in English verse, and five years later another 
English writer, William Painter, gave a prose ver- 
sion of the old story in his " Palace of Pleasure." 
The main line of development of the tragedy is to 
be found in Bandello, Brooke, and Shakespeare; 
the dramatist following quite closely the plot as it 
came to him from the English poet, but transform- 
ing and transfiguring both material and form by 
his insight, his dramatic skill, and, above all, by 
turning upon the passion of love for the first time 
the full splendour of his imagination. 

" Romeo and Juliet " is the consummate flower 
of Shakespeare's poetic genius, the complete dis- 
closure of his purely poetic gifts. The dramatic 
insight and skill with which the materials are rear- 
ranged ; the brilliancy of characterization, as in the 
splendid figure of Mercutio ; the rising tide of emo- 
tion which bears the ill-fated lovers to their death, 
do not make us blind to the fact that this beautiful 
and appealing play, fragrant with the breath of the 
young summer, bathed in the soft radiance of the 



202 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Italian night, touched with the imperishable charm 
of youth and passion, is primarily poetic and only 
secondarily dramatic. The characteristics of the 
early work of the poet are found in it : the frequent 
use of rhymes and the tendency to play with words ; 
above all, the essentially lyrical quality of the play. 
Passages of pure and unsurpassed singing quality 
abound, and several verse-forms which were familiar 
to the medieval poets and were in use in Shake- 
speare's time are found in perfection. The first 
meeting of the lovers in Capulet's house is described 
in sonnet form ; Juliet's prayer in her father's 
orchard for the coming of night is reminiscent of 
the Evening-song, and has all the qualities of the 
Epithalamium ; while the parting of the lovers, when 

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops, 

remains the most tender and beautiful Morning- 
song in the language. Caught in the tragic move- 
ment of a family feud, the lovers live out their 
romance in five passionate days, during which the 
drama steadily deepens and sweeps towards its end 
with tumultuous current; and at the supreme 
moment, with characteristic insight, death ushers 
in a final peace. It is this vision of reconciliation 
which made Shakespeare a master of human expe- 
rience in its widest scope and significance. While 
exhibiting the fatality of individual struggle against 
the social order, he continually makes us aware 



THE POETIC PERIOD 



203 



of the deep and radical changes which spring out 
of tragic resistance and defiance ; the searching 
reaction of the assertion of individuahty on the 
social order. 

Shakespeare's joy in the possession of the poetic 
gift, and his earliest delight in life, found radiant 
expression in " A Midsummer Night's Dream," a 
masterpiece of poetic fancy, and the gayest and 
most beautiful of poetic comedies. Rich as this 
drama is in humorous effects, it is so essentially 
lyrical in spirit that it stands alone in English 
poetry; an exquisite expansion of the masque or 
festival poem into a drama of pure fancy and daring 
imagination. It was probably composed for some 
marriage celebration, though it has not been con- 
nected as yet with any wedding among the poet's 
friends or in the court circle. 

Written about 1596, hints of the play appear to 
have been drawn from many sources. The modern 
reader finds such hints in Plutarch's " Life of The- 
seus," in Chaucer's " Knight's Tale," in Ovid's 
" Metamorphoses," and in the old French romance 
of " Huon of Bordeaux," of which an English trans- 
lation appeared in the decade between 1530 and 
1540. Shakespeare's real indebtedness, however, was 
to the poetic imagination of the Germanic race to 
which he belonged, which still kept alive, in folk- 
lore and fairy tale, in every hamlet in England, the 
magical world of fairy folk ; so near to the world of 
men, and so intimately associated with that world, 



204 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and yet invisible to all save those who saw with the 
imagination. Especially were these elusive elves 
concerned with the mysteries of love and marriage ; 
and in the magic mirror in which the poet shows 
them they not only associate Theseus and Hippol- 
yta with the sweetest traditions of English field 
and fireside, but show forth, as in a parable, the 
magic properties of love when love touches the 
whole gamut of feeling and sets the whole nature 
vibrating from the passions to the imagination. 
There are evident connections in the play with the 
aspects of life and character which interested the 
poet and with which he had already dealt in " The 
Comedy of Errors," in " Love's Labour's Lost," and 
in " The Two Gentlemen of Verona," while its 
exquisite lyrical quality affiliates it with " Romeo 
and Juliet " ; but, both as regards older sources of 
incident and his own earlier work, " A Midsummer 
Night's Dream " stands in complete and radiant 
individuality. It discloses the original and spon- 
taneous force of the poet's genius ; his ability to 
use, fuse, and recast the most diverse materials with 
entire freedom and yet with unerring artistic in- 
stinct. He is equally at home with the classical 
tradition nobly presented in the figure of Theseus, 
with the most extravagant rustic humour set in the 
mouths of the inimitable clowns, and with the tra- 
ditional lore of childhood — the buoyant play of the 
popular imagination — in Titania and Oberon and 
Puck. His mastery of the verse-form which Eng- 



THE POETIC PERIOD 



205 



lish tragedy has adopted is equally clear and strik- 
ing. The iambic pentameter, with which his genius 
has almost identified English blank verse, finds in 
" A Midsummer Night s Dream " the full develop- 
ment of its melodic power. The line of five feet, 
each accented following an unaccented syllable, 
without rhyme, is freed, in Shakespeare's hands, 
from the stiffness and rigidity which characterized 
it before Marlowe's time, and becomes soft as a flute 
in its lighter notes and resonant and full-toned as a 
bell in great passages : 

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
So flevv'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp'd hke Thessalian bulls; 
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
Each unto each. A cry more tuneable 
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn. 
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly. 

One hears in these lines that clear " chime of the 
vowels " which gives English verse its most pene- 
trating and magical melody. 

The fairies and the clowns made an irresistible 
appeal to the crowds in the theatre, and " A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream " enjoyed almost a century 
of popularity ; it was imitated and pilfered from ; 
when it lost its hold upon the generation of the 
Restoration, it reappeared as opera and operetta. 
In Germany its fortunes touched their highest pros- 
perity ; Wieland recalled its elves in his " Oberon," 



206 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Goethe drew upon it in a striking scene in 
" Faust," and Mendelssohn, in song and overture, 
interpreted it with delicate insight and sym- 
pathy. It is the supreme masterpiece in the 
world of fairy lore. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SONNETS 

The poetic period in Shakespeare's development 
coincided with a devotion to sonnet-writings which 
rose to the height of a passion from which few Eng- 
hsh poets escaped during the closing decade of the 
sixteenth century. The sonnet was the favourite 
verse-form for the expression of friendship, love, 
personal devotion, admiration of beauty ; it engaged 
the interest of the greatest poets and of the most 
mechanical and commonplace verse-makers ; it was 
the chosen instrument for the most delicate and 
poetic worship of individual women or of abstract 
virtues, and for the grossest and most obvious 
flattery. 

At a time when an author had practically no 
ownership in his own work and when the business 
of publishing was carried on largely in defiance of 
or complete indifference to his wishes, and gener- 
ally to his harm, a great mass of literary work was 
circulated in manuscript, and a goodly number of 
people found occupation in multiplying copies of 
these unpublished pieces for private circulation 
among the friends and admirers of authors. Dur- 

207 



2o8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ing the decade between 1590 and 1600 thousands 
of sonnets of every degree of merit passed from 
hand to hand, and were read, known, and talked 
about almost as widely, in some cases, as printed 
books. The reputation of certain groups of sonnets 
soon extended beyond the circle of the writer's 
friends, and general interest and curiosity made it 
worth while for some printer or publisher to secure 
copies of the poems and publish them, not only 
without the consent and revision of the writer, but 
often without his knowledge. 

This appears to have been the case with a group 
of sonnets written by Shakespeare between 1593 
and 1598, when the lyrical mood was dominant. 
The Sonnets were published in May, 1609, by 
Thomas Thorpe, who appears to have turned the 
absence of protection to authors to his own profit 
by obtaining and printing unpublished works which 
had secured wide reading in manuscript form. The 
popularity of Shakespeare's Sonnets doubtless 
attracted his attention, and, having secured copies 
of them, he sent them to the press without the 
poet's consent and probably without his knowledge. 
That many of these poems had been in existence 
more than ten years before the publication by 
Thorpe is proven by the fact that two of them 
appeared in " The Passionate Pilgrim," published 
in 1599, and that Meres, in the " Palladis Tamia," 
published a year earlier, referred to Shakespeare's 
"sug'r'd Sonnets among his private friends," Allu- 



THE SONNETS 20g 

sions and lines In the Sonnets made it possible to 
assign them at least proximate dates. They can 
hardly have been written before 1594 nor later than 
1598. They belong, therefore, to the period of 
" Romeo and Juliet" and the " Midsummer Night's 
Dream," and, with " Venus and Adonis " and the 
" Rape of Lucrece," which they followed at a short 
interval, they constitute Shakespeare's contribution 
to lyrical poetry. Their extraordinary beauty of 
thought, sentiment, and form has given them a 
foremost place in English poetry, while their possi- 
ble significance as a record of the poet's experience 
or an expression of his emotions has evoked an 
immense body of comment. 

Surrey and Wyatt brought the sonnet as a liter- 
ary form from Italy, where Petrarch was its ac- 
knowledged master ; but they did not slavishly 
reproduce the Petrarchian model ; they followed a 
sound instinct in giving the sonnet greater simplic- 
ity. The Italian sonnet consists of an octave and 
sestet — a group of eight decasyllabic lines followed 
by a group of six decasyllabic lines ; the sonnet of 
Shakespeare consists of three quatrains, or groups 
of four lines, with a concluding couplet. Precisians 
have held that the Shakespearian Sonnets are not 
sonnets, but fourteen-line poems. But Shakespeare 
did not originate the sonnet-structure which he 
used ; it had been made ready to his hand by a long 
line of English poets. His supreme skill gave final 
authority to what had hitherto been an experiment. 



2IO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Fifty-two years before the publication of Shake- 
speare's Sonnets, a group of sonnets by Surrey and 
another group by Wyatt had been pubHshed, many 
of them being translations from Petrarch. The vol- 
ume containing these sonnets was reprinted six or 
seven times before Shakespeare left Stratford. It 
was followed in 1582 by Watson's " Centurie of 
Love"; in 1591 by Sidney's "Astrophel and 
Stella"; in 1592 by Daniel's "Delia" and Consta- 
ble's "Diana"; in 1593 by Fletcher's " Licia," 
Barnes's " Parthenophil," and Lodge's " Phillis " ; 
in 1594 by Spenser's " Amoretti " and Drayton's 
" Idea." To these collections of sonnets must be 
added probably as many more, the impulse expend- 
ing itself apparently about 1597. The culminating 
point of this passion for sonnet-writing was probably 
reached about 1594, and its highest point of achieve- 
ment was attained by Shakespeare. While there is 
much that is interesting and even important, from 
the standpoint not only of literary development but 
artistic excellence, in the work of this large group 
of sonneteers, Shakespeare alone gave his work 
universal significance and original and enduring 
beauty. 

He did not originate a new form of sonnet, as he 
did not originate a new form of drama; he took the 
form which he found ready to his hand and gave it 
freedom, flexibility, a new compass, and a capacity 
for musical expression which the earlier English 
poets had predicted but had not unfolded. He con- 



THE SONNETS ^11 

tinued and completed the modification of the sonnet 
as Petrarch left it which had been effected by the 
English sonneteers since the time of Surrey and 
Wyatt ; surrendering something of the sustained 
fulness of tone of the Italian sonnet, but securing 
a sweetness, a flow of pure melody, which were be- 
yond the compass of the earlier English sonneteers. 
The decasyllabic lines in groups of four, the alternate 
lines rhyming, and closing with a couplet, imposed 
rigid limitations on the poet but did not prevent 
him from securing; some noble melodic effects. 

The one hundred and fifty-four poems which 
make up the " Book Called Shakespeare's Son- 
nettes " form a sonnet-sequence, as clearly as do 
Mrs. Browning's " Sonnets from the Portuguese," or 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's " House of Life " ; they 
deal with two leading themes in an order which is 
not necessarily historical, but which discloses an 
interior principle of arrangement ; to borrow a com- 
parison from music, they consist of variations on 
two dominating motives or themes. The order in 
which they were presented in the edition of 1609 
has been generally accepted, although nothing is 
known with regard to the principle or method of 
arrangement followed by the publisher. This order 
has been accepted because it has, in the judgment 
of a majority of students, the justification of a logi- 
cal and intelligible grouping. In the poet's time, 
sonnets were often written in sequence ; the sepa- 
rate poems presenting, when read as a whole, a 



2 12 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

many-sided but connected treatment of a single 
theme or of a group of relating themes. The sepa- 
rate sonnets, written from time to time as expres- 
sions of diverse moods, as Tennyson wrote " In 
Memoriam," disclosed, when brought .together, a 
unity, not only of manner, but of theme or thought. 
There is every reason to believe that Shakespeare 
wrote the Sonnets at intervals during a period of 
four or five years ; the Sonnets show that during 
this period his mind was constantly reverting to two 
kinds of emotional experience, which he approached 
from many different points of view and in many 
diverse moods, but which held a first place in his 
interest and moved him to expression. 

The one hundred and fifty-four poems in Shake- 
speare's sonnet-sequence have for their general 
themes a deep and highly idealized love or friendship 
for a young man of extraordinary beauty and charm 
of nature, and a passionate love for a " dark woman." 
These two unknown persons and the poet are 
the actors in a drama which may have been subjec- 
tive in its origin, but which is definitely objective in 
its presentation. The spiritual motive is suggested 
in the one hundred and forty-fourth sonnet: 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 
Which Uke two spirits do suggest me still ; 

The better angel is a man right fair, 
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. 

The friend to whom the first one hundred and 
twenty-six sonnets are addressed was noble in na- 



THE SONNETS 



21 



ture, station, and fortune, endowed with all manly 
qualities, and possessed of a winning beauty of fea- 
ture and charm of manner ; the remaining twenty- 
eight are ad- 
dressed to or 
describe rela- 
tions with a 
woman who 
was plain of 
feature, pale, 
dark, treach- 
erous, and 
stained, but 
the mistress of 
a potent fasci- 
nation. If the 
sonnets are 
read in their 
present order 
as for m i n g 

,1 WILLIAM HERBERT, EARL OF PEMBROKE, SHAKE- 

a connected 

speare's friend and patron. 

poem, tne poet, From an engraving by T. Jenkins, after the original of Van 

hr • 1 1 Dyke, in the collection of the Earl of Pembroke. 

IS triend, and 

the dark woman enact a drama of love, the acts of 

which are recorded in the emotions and meditations 

of the poet. The entire sequence may be broken 

into smaller groups, each of which conveys with 

more or less definiteness and completeness some 

phase of the drama or some aspect of the poet's 

experience. 




214 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The sonnet-sequence opens with a celebration of 
the beauty and perfections of the noble youth whom 
the poet loves, dwelling with an idealizing delicacy 
and subtlety, after the manner of the Elizabethan 
sonneteer, on his separate and numerable charms, 
and urging him to marry in order that the marvel- 
lous beauty which has been given him may be repro- 
duced in his children. Failing to secure for posterity 
copies of his friend s beauty by marriage, the poet 
offers to give it immortality in his verse. With the 
twenty-seventh sonnet a note of sadness and pain, 
foreshadowing a change in the harmony between the 
poet and his friend, is sounded; and the thoughts 
which come in absence and separation rise in the 
poet's mind and are set in exquisite form before the 
imagination in " sessions of sweet silent thought." 
The modulations of this theme are marvellously 
varied and beautiful, covering the whole range of 
sadness, longing, regret, loneliness, misgiving, fore- 
boding, and despair. 

So far no shadow save that of separation has 
rested upon the friendship between the two men, 
but now the dark woman enters. The poet in the 
forty-second sonnet describes himself as her lover, 
and his sorrow gets its deepest pang from the fact 
that his friend has robbed him of his mistress : 

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, 

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss ; 

Both find each other, and I lose both twain 
And both for my sake lay on me this cross : 



THE SONNETS 215 

But here's the joy : my friend and I are one ; 
Sweet flattery ! then she loves but me alone. 

Loneliness, disillusion, pain, self-denial, renuncia- 
tion, and forgiveness are the notes of this phase of 
the poet's experience, rationalized and illuminated by 
meditation. There is no bitterness in his thought 
of his friend, estranged from him by the woman he 
loves and thus bringing him a double loss ; his love 
and admiration triumph over his sense of injustice 
and injury. This feeling gives the episode of shat- 
tered friendship its tenderest note, and has left its 
record in a sonnet which registers Shakespeare's 
highest achievement in the field of lyric poetry : 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold 

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 

As after sunset fadeth in the west ; 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, 

That on the ashes of his youth doth He, 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. 
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong. 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. 

In the forty-eighth sonnet the entrance of a rival 
poet is recorded, and the charms which have hith- 
erto been celebrated by the writer of the Sonnets 
inspire " the travail of a mightier pen." The rival 
singer, whose advent gives a wound to the son- 



2l6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

neteer's self-love, has been identified by different 
students of the Sonnets with Chapman, Marlowe, 
Drayton, and Daniel. In the light of rejection and 
disillusion the poet comments with unflinching 
frankness on the meanness of the player's occupa- 
tion, the lowliness of his own station in life, and the 
frequent supremacy of evil in the world. Through 
all these phases of his humiliation and sorrow his 
love for his friend remains unmoved, and he finds a 
deep consolation in the sense of power which his 
art gives him. Through art the beauty of his 
friend shall be the joy of posterity, as it has been 
the poet's inspiration. 

There is a touching cry of farewell in the eighty- 
seventh sonnet ; but after an interval of silence the 
poet takes up again the old themes, with more as- 
surance and with a new note of hope and faith. 
This note becomes dominant in the one hundred 
and sixteenth sonnet, which may be regarded as the 
highest point of vision attained in the sequence : 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove : 
Oh, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; 
It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 



THE SONNETS 21 7 

If this be error and upon me proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

Of the second general group of the Sonnets, 
beginning with the one hundred and twenty-sev- 
enth, seventeen are addressed to the woman whose 
dark fascinations have woven a spell over the poet's 
senses without beguiling his intellect, and have 
estranged his friend ; while of the remaining eleven 
sonnets, nine are given up, for the most part, to 
the regret, repentance, and humiliation which his 
fatuous passion has brought to him. There is 
neither evasion nor self-deception in these striking 
confessions ; they are charged with the bitterness 
of sincere and unflinching self-discovery and self- 
revelation : 

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, 

Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, 
Still losing when I saw myself to win ! 

The two concluding sonnets serve as a postlude 
to the group, and at the very end of the sequence 
touch with the glow and heat of " love's fire " the 
long story of the poem. 

For many years the Sonnets shared the general 
indifference to Shakespeare which, perhaps as dis- 
tinctly as any other sign of the times, measured the 
distance in taste and feeling between the age of 
Elizabeth and that of Queen Anne and her imme- 
diate successors. During the century now closing 
no part of Shakespeare's work has been more 



2l8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

patiently or eagerly studied, and concerning none 
has there been greater divergence of opinion. 

It has been held by some students that the Son- 
nets are to be regarded chiefly as poetic exercises, 
and Mr. Sidney Lee has not only reenforced this 
view, but made a substantial contribution to liter- 
ary scholarship by a thorough examination of the 
attitude and methods of English sonneteers in Shake- 
speare's time and of sonnet-writing on the Conti- 
nent. Whatever interpretation is put upon the 
Sonnets, the background of poetic habit and con- 
vention which Mr. Lee has put behind sonnet-writ- 
ing at the close of the sixteenth century must be 
taken into account ; for Shakespeare was preemi- 
nently an opportunist so far as the use of materials 
and methods were concerned ; with his poetic sensi- 
tiveness and thrift in invention he could not have 
failed to share the passion for sonnet-writing and 
the conventional attitude toward the art as a highly 
specialized form of lyric poetry. 

This means that it would have been a natural 
exercise of Shakespeare's poetic faculty to idealize 
a patron ; to give to a friendship for a man of great 
station the warmth and emotion of a deep personal 
love ; to comment upon the frailty of women, the 
treachery of friends, and the hardness of the world 
as if these things had come within the compass of 
the poet's experience ; to address elaborate apostro- 
phes to abstract virtues ; to make an imaginary 
woman the object of a passion and the shaping 



THE SONNETS 219 

spirit of an intrigue which should have the sem- 
blance of reality without having any more sub- 
stantial basis than the fancy of an Elizabethan 
sonneteer. 

This is what Shakespeare may have done ; but it 
is highly improbable that the key to the Sonnets is 
to be found in a comparative study of sonnet-writ- 
ing in Shakespeare's time. The great majority of 
students have been forced to the conclusion that, 
while the conventional spirit and method of con- 
temporary sonneteers had a distinct influence upon 
the poet so far as form and manner were concerned, 
the content of the Sonnets had a vital relation to his 
own experience. This conclusion is based upon 
the fact that a note of reality seems to be distinctly 
sounded in the series ; that they tell a story or 
reveal an experience which is definitely outlined 
notwithstanding the mask of conventional imagery 
and phraseology which the poet employed; that 
throughout the entire body of his dramatic work he 
uniformly and consistently keeps in touch with real- 
ity, using historic material whenever he can find it 
adaptable for his purpose, and allying himself, 
apparently by instinct as well as by intention, with 
the force which resides in real things or in the deep 
and rich deposit of the imagination dealing, as in 
such figures as Hamlet or Prospero, with the great- 
est realities of experience ; that in the sensitiveness, 
the capacity for devotion, the power of passion, 
which the Sonnets reveal they so entirely express 



2 20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the nature of Shakespeare that they must be 
accepted as, in a true sense, autobiographic. 

Those who regard the Sonnets as pure and 
dehberate autobiography, containing a definite con- 
fession to be hterally interpreted, probably stray as 
far from the truth as those who dissociate the poet 
entirely from his work and regard the Sonnets as 
technical exercises only. The habit of the age and 
the marked and consistent objectivity of Shake- 
speare's mode of expression make it highly improb- 
able that he laid his heart bare by putting in 
historic order and with entire fidelity of detail a 
passional experience which had searched his spirit 
as with a lighted torch held aloft in the darkest 
recesses of his nature. 

The truth probably lies between these two 
extremes of interpretation ; it seems probable that 
the Sonnets are disclosures of the poet's experience 
without being transcriptive of his actual history ; 
that they embody the fruits of a great experience 
without revealing that experience in its historic 
order. Literal, consecutive recitals of fact the Son- 
nets are not, but they are autobiographic in the 
only way in which a poet of Shakespeare's spirit 
and training, living in his period, could make his 
art the vehicle of autobiography: they use the 
material which experience had deposited in Shake- 
speare's nature, but they hide the actual happenings 
in his life behind the veil of an elaborate art and 
of a philosophy with which the thought of western 



THE SONNETS 22 1 

Europe was saturated in his time. The Sonnets 
may be read as the poetic record of an emotional 
experience which left lasting traces behind it, and 
as a disclosure of the mind of the poet ; but they 
cannot be safely read as an exact record of fact. 
The poet, as Shelley suggests, was willing to 
intrust his secret to those who had the wit to 
understand it. 

The dedication of the Sonnets was written, not 
by their author, but by their publisher, and has fur- 
nished material for one of the most extensive of 
the many controversies which have centred about 
Shakespeare : 

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF . 

THESE . INSVING . SONNETS . 

M? W . H . ALL . HAPPINESSE . 

AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . 

PROMISED . 

BY . 

OVR . EVER - LIVING . POET . 

WISHETH . 

THE . WELL - WISHING . 

ADVENTVRER . IN . 

SETTING . 

FORTH . 

T. T. 

In these words Thomas Thorpe, not Shake- 
speare, addressed a patron whom the research and 
acumen of many decades of investigation and spec- 
ulation have not been able to identify to the satis- 
faction of a majority of students. For many years 
the claims of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, 
were ur^ed with o-reat inQ-enuity and with consid- 



222 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

erable success. This young nobleman was a rep- 
resentative man of the close of the Elizabethan 
epoch. Clarendon describes him as " very well 
bred, and of excellent parts, and a graceful speaker 
upon any subject, having a good proportion of 
Learning, and a ready Wit to apply it and enlarge 
upon it ; of a pleasant and facetious humour, and a 
disposition affable, generous, and magnificent." 
The " dark lady " was identified with Mary Fitton, 
who was a Maid of Honour to the Queen, of a gay 
and pleasure-loving disposition, on very friendly 
terms with some of the players of Shakespeare's 
company, of free manners and easy morals, who was 
finally driven from the Court by the results of her 
intimacy with the Earl of Pembroke. The claims 
of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, 
the brilliant and popular courtier, scholar, soldier, 
and patron of the theatre, to whom Shakespeare 
dedicated " Venus and Adonis " and " The Rape of 
Lucrece," have been presented with much force. 
Many facts in the careers of the Earl of South- 
ampton and of the Earl of Pembroke meet the 
requirements of the few and uncertain biographical 
data furnished by the Sonnets ; but the acceptance 
of either of these noblemen as the " W. H." of the 
dedication raises almost as many questions as it 
answers. 

It is highly improbable that a dedication written 
by the publisher of a collection of poems, which he 
was about to issue without authorization, would dis- 



THE SONNETS 



223 



close the Identity of the chief figure in the drama of 
passion guarded in its record by the most highly 
conventionalized poetic form of the age. It is more 
probable that 
such a dedica- 
tion would be 
addressed to a 
possible patron 
of the volume 
or to a personal 
friend of the 
publisher — 
some such per- 
son as the 
printer, Will- 
iam Hall, whose 
claims to the 
mysterious ini- 
tials "W. H." 
Mr. Lee has 
brought f or- 
w a r d as the 
most recent 
contribution to 
a discussion which will never, in all probability, be 
finally settled, and which turns, in any event, upon 
a matter which is solely one of intelligent curiosity. 
The supreme value of the Sonnets lies in their 
beauty and completeness as works of art. They dis- 
close marked inequalities of inspiration and of work- 




HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 

From an engraving by R. Cooper, after the original of Mirevelt, 
in the collection of the Duke of Bedford. 



2 24 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

manship ; in some cases they are prime examples of 
the strained imagery, the forced fancy, the artificial 
style, of the Elizabethan sonneteer ; but again and 
again in the noble sequence the poet blends experi- 
ence, philosophy, and the most sorely over-used 
poetic form of his time in a harmonious whole 
which appeals with equal power to the intellect and 
to the sense of beauty. The artificial frame of 
fourteen lines becomes fluid in his hand ; the 
emotion which penetrates and irradiates it rises out 
of the depths of his nature ; and both are touched 
with the inimitable magic of the poet's imagination. 
The volume in which the Sonnets were published 
in 1609 contained a detached poem of forty-nine 
stanzas in the metre of " The Rape of Lucrece," in 
which the sorrows of a young girl, betrayed and 
deserted by her lover, are set forth in the gentle, 
tender, melodious manner of Spenser. Of " A 
Lover's Complaint " nothing further is known than 
this fact. It has no relationship with the Sonnets, 
and is in a wholly different key ; but there is no 
reason why Shakespeare should not have written it 
in the early lyrical period. Its appearance with the 
Sonnets makes it highly probable that it was in 
circulation among Shakespeare's friends in manu- 
script and was secured by Thorpe in the same way 
in which copies of the Sonnets were obtained. The 
poem is in the manner of the conventional pastoral 
so popular at the same time, and is pervaded by an 
air of quiet melancholy and gentle beauty. Com- 



THE SONNETS 225 

plaints were sung in many keys by the Elizabethan 
poets, and " A Lover's Complaint " was probably art 
early experiment in an imitative mood. 

Robert Chester's " Love's Martyr ; or, Rosalinds 
Complaint," published in 1601, contained, accord- 
ing to the preface, " diverse poetical essays on . . . 
the Turtle and Phoenix, done by the best and chief- 
est of our modern wTiters." Shakespeare's contri- 
bution to this collection of verse was " The Phoenix 
and the Turtle," the most enigmatical of his works. 
This poem of thirteen stanzas of four lines each, 
concludinof with a Threnos in five stanzas of three 
lines each, is a poetical requiem for the Phoenix and 
the Turtle, whose love " was married chastity." 
Among the contributors to the collection were 
Shakespeare's great contemporaries, Jonson, Chap- 
man, Marston ; but neither the purpose nor the 
occasion of the publication has yet been discovered, 
nor has any light been shed from any quarter on 
the allegory whose meaning Shakespeare seems to 
have hidden from posterity in this bafifling poem. 
Emerson suggested that a prize be offered for 
an essay which " should explain, by a historical 
research into the poetic myths and tendencies of the 
age in which it was written, the frame and allusions 
of the poem ; " but although much research has 
been devoted to this object and many metaphysical, 
political, ecclesiastical, and historical interpretations 
have been suo^orested, " The Phcsnix and the Turtle" 
remains an unsolved enigma. 



226 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



In 1599 William Jaggard, who, like Thorpe, laid 
hands upon any unpublished writing which had 
secured popularity and promised success to a 
venturesome publisher, issued a small anthology of 
contemporary verse under the title of " The Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim. 
By W. Shake- 
speare." The 
first two selec- 
tions were Son- 
nets by Shake- 
speare hitherto 
unpublished, 
and there were 
three poems 
taken from 
" Love's La- 
bour's Lost," 
which appeared 
in 1591. The 
collection was 
rep ri n ted in 
1 6 1 2 with the 
addition of two 













X, 



coisnyiw. 



{ytCo-fd/ et^imnmun, smJuseriiifi^'an,, 



Qm. s(mMt'£fwmn,^/G4nJ&yct£yuaum, 



poems by Thomas Heywood. Shakespeare appears 
to have borne the affront in silence, but Heywood 
protested, in a dedicatory epistle which appeared in 
that year, against the injury done him, and declared 
that Shakespeare was much offended " with Mr. 
Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed 



THE SONNETS 227 

to make so bold with his name." This protest was 
not without effect, for a new title-page was issued 
from which Shakespeare's name was omitted. Of 
the twenty-one pieces which make up " The Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim," only five can be ascribed to 
Shakespeare. The collection was a miscellany, 
" a rag-picker's bag of stolen goods," put together 
without authority from the poets whose work was 
stolen, and the use of Shakespeare's name is one 
evidence of its weight with readers. 



CHAPTER X 

THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 

The period of Shakespeare's apprenticeship 
ended about 1596; the succeeding four or five 
years show him in full possession of his art and his 
material, though the deeper phases of experience 
were still before him and the full maturity of his 
genius was to be coincident with the searching of 
his spirit in the period of the Tragedies. The last 
half-decade of the sixteenth century were golden 
years in the life of the rising dramatist. He had 
made his place in the world ; he had learned his 
craft ; he had come to clear self-consciousness ; the 
intoxication of the possession of the poetic imagina- 
tion and the gift of poetic expression was upon him ; 
he had immense zest in life, and life was at full-tide 
in his veins and in the world about him. The 
Queen was at the height of her splendid career; 
the country had grown into clear perception of its 
vital force and the possible greatness of its fortunes ; 
English energy and courage were preparing the 
new soil of the new world for the seeds of a greater 
England at the ends of the earth ; London was full 
of brilliant and powerful personalities, touched with 

228 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 229 

the vital impulse of the age, and alive in emotion, 
imagination, and will. It was a time of great works 
of art and of action; in the two worlds of thought 
and of affairs the tide of creative energy was at the 
flood. 

The genius of Spenser bore its ripest fruit 
in " Colin Clout," the " Epithalamium," and the 
concludinor books of the " Faerie Oueene." Sid- 
ney's noble " Apologie for Poesie," which was in the 
key not only of the occupations and resources of his 
mind but of his life, appeared in 1595, and a group 
of Bacon's earlier essays in 1597. Chapman's 
" Homer " and Fairfax's " Tasso " enriched the 
English language with two masterpieces of transla- 
tion. Hooker and Hakluyt were writing and pub- 
lishing. Among the playwrights are to be found 
the great names of Dekker, Jonson,- Middleton, 
Heywood, Marston, and Chapman. The men who 
had possession of the stage when the poet came up 
from Stratford — Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, 
Nash, Kyd, and Lyly — had been succeeded by 
Shakespeare's generation. That he should have 
detached himself from this great group and made a 
distinct impression on his contemporaries is not the 
least among the many evidences of his extraordinary 
power. English literature was in one of its noblest 
periods, and Shakespeare shared an impulse which, 
like a great tide, carried men of every kind of power 
to the furthest limits of their possible achievement. 

At no period of his life was Shakespeare more 



230 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

keenly observant, more intellectually alert, more 
inventive, more joyous in spirit, more spontaneous 
and poetic. He had solved the problem of his rela- 
tion to his time by discovering his gift, acquiring 
his tools, and discerning his opportunity; he had 
ease of mind and openness of imagination. He 
gave himself up to the joy of life, and lived in 
its full tide with immense delight. He was not 
only in the world but of it. Even in this eager and 
golden period so meditative a mind could not escape 
those previsions of tragedy and fate which are never 
far off ; and sorrow did not pass by the house- 
hold at Stratford, for in August, 1596, accord- 
ing to the parish record, Hamnet, Shakespeare's 
only son, was buried. In this year " King John " 
was written, and it has been surmised that in the 
pathetic and beautiful character of Arthur, which is 
essentially unhistoric, the poet was portraying his 
own son, and in the touching lament of Constance 
giving voice to his own sorrow. This loss, which 
must have been poignant, was apparently the only 
shadow on these prosperous years when the poet 
was in his earliest prime. 

History and comedy absorbed the imagination 
and divided the creative energy of Shakespeare 
from 1596 to 1600, Of the ten plays founded on 
English history, " King John " serves as a prelude, 
with " Richard H.," the two parts of " Henry IV.," 
" Henry V.," the three parts of " Henry VI.," and 
" Richard III." as a chronicle play on a great 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 



231 



scale; while " Henry VIII." may be taken as an 
epilogue. The plays were not, however, written 
in historical sequence, nor did Shakespeare have 
any intention at the start of making a connected 
treatment of a stirring and dramatic period in 
English his- 
tory. He found 
the old plays 
dealing with 
Henry VI. 
ready to his 
h a n d, as has 
been noted, and 
used them as 
material, touch- 
ing " Henry 
VI." very light- 
ly and probably 
only in the way 
of adaptation 
and revision, 
and the inter- 
polation of a 
few characteristic scenes and passages. " Richard 
III." came a little later in time, and is so evidently 
modelled after Marlowe that its Shakespearian au- 
thorship has been questioned by very competent 
critics. It is full of echoes and reminiscences of 
Marlowe's manner; it is tempestuous, turbulent, 
and violent ; it is history dramatized rather than 




JOHN FLETCHER. 
From a picture in the possession of the Earl of Clarendon. 



232 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a true historical drama ; but the figure of Richard, 
which dominates the play and charges it with vital- 
ity, is as clearly realized and as superbly drawn as 
any character in the whole range of the plays. The 
lack of artistic coherence in the play is due to the 
inharmonious elements in it — the attempt to com- 
bine the method of Marlowe and the spirit of Shake- 
speare. The framework of the play was conven- 
tional even in Shakespeare's time ; the manner 
is so lyrical that it is a tragic poem rather than 
a dramatic tragedy ; nevertheless, Richard is drawn 
with a hand so firm, a realism so modern, that 
a play of very inferior construction becomes 
immensely effective for stage purposes, and has 
been almost continuously popular from its first 
representation. Shakespeare followed Holinshed 
and Marlowe in writing "Richard III."; but he 
put into the play that element of ethical purpose 
which stamps all his work and separates it in 
fundamental conception from the work of Marlowe. 
The parallelisms between " Richard II." and 
Marlowe's "Edward II." are so obvious that it 
is impossible to escape the inference that Shake- 
speare was still under the spell of the tremendous 
personality of the author of " Tamburlaine " ; but 
there are signs of liberation. There is a change of 
subject from the fortunes of the House of York 
to those of the House of Lancaster ; blank verse, 
to which Marlowe rigidly adhered, gives place to 
frequent use of rhyme ; and the atmosphere iit 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 233 

which the action takes place is softened and clari- 
fied. The weak king's eloquence often betrays 
Shakespeare's inimitable touch, and the superb 
eulogy on England spoken by John of Gaunt is 
a perfect example of Shakespeare's use of the 
grand manner. Still following Holinshed, and 
under the influence of Marlowe, the dramatist 
was swiftly working out his artistic emancipation. 
To this period belongs " King John,"- which was 
probably completed about 1595, and which was a 
recast of the older play of " The Troublesome 
Raigne of John, King of England," published in 
1 59 1. The conventional construction was not 
greatly modified by Shakespeare, but the play 
marks the transition from the chronicle play to 
the true drama; in which incidents and characters 
are selected for their dramatic significance, a 
dramatic motive introduced, dramatic movement 
traced, and a climax reached. The older play- 
wrights, dealing with the events of a whole reign, 
would have given the play an epical or narrative 
quality ; Shakespeare selected, compressed, fore- 
shortened, and grouped events and figures in such 
a way as to secure connected action, the develop- 
ment of character, and a final catastrophe which is 
impressive, if not intrinsically dramatic. He in- 
stinctively omitted certain coarse scenes which were 
in the older play ; he brought into clear light and 
consistency certain characters which were roughly 
sketched in the earlier work ; in the scene between 



234 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Hubert and Arthur he struck a new note of tender- 
ness and pathos ; while in giving marked promi- 
nence to the humour of Faulconbridge he opened 
the way for that blending of comedy with tragedy 
and history which is one of the marks, not only of 
his maturity, but of his greatness. The play has 
no hero, and is not free from the faults of the long 
line of dramas from which it descended and to which 
it belongs, but Shakespeare's creative energy is dis- 
tinctly at work in it. 

The growth of the poet's mind and art was rapid, 
and, in its large lines, is readily followed ; but it was 
a vital, not a logical, development, and it was not, 
therefore, entirely orderly and harmonious. In his 
later work he sometimes returned to his earlier 
manner ; at his maturity he more than once took 
up existing material, and was content to retouch 
without reconstructing it. The plays vary greatly 
in quality and insight ; it would not be easy to find 
in the work of any other poet of the first rank more 
marked inequalities. Many of the sonnets touch 
the very limits of perfection ; others are halting, 
artificial, full of the conceits and forced imagery of 
the day. The early historical plays are often pano- 
ramic rather than dramatic; "Henry IV.," on the 
other hand, is sustained throughout its wide range 
of interest and action by the full force of Shake- 
speare's genius. This inequality in the plays, the 
irregularities of growth which often present them- 
selves, and the occasional reversions to the conven- 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 235 

tional construction which Shakespeare inherited 
from his predecessors or to his own earlier man- 
ner, humanize the poet, bring his work well within 
the range of the literary evolution of his time, and, 
while leaving the miracle of his genius unexplained, 
make his career and his achievement intelligible and 
explicable. 

The brilliant years between 1596 and 1600 or 
1601 were divided between history and comedy; 
between the splendid show and pageant of society 
as illustrated in the story of the English kings, and 
the variety, the humour, the inconsistency of men, as 
these qualities are brought out in social life. The 
" Taming of the Shrew," and the " Merchant of 
Venice," in which the genius of the dramatist 
shines in full splendour, probably antedated by a few 
months the writing of the two parts of " Henry IV." 
and of " Henry V.," but these plays are so nearly 
contemporaneous that their exact order of produc- 
tion is -unimportant. The historical plays maybe 
grouped together for convenience, keeping in mind 
the fact that the dramatist was apparently finding 
relief from dealing with great matters of state and 
great historical personages by turning from time to 
time to comedy, and perhaps by writing comedy 
simultaneously with history. 

The first part of " Henry IV." was written not 
later than 1597; the second part followed it after 
an interval of not more than two years. The 
sources of the play are to be found in Holinshed 



236 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



and an earlier chronicle play of little merit but 
marked popularity, " The Famous Victories of 

Henry V." The play fol- 
lows history with devia- 
tions, the most important 
being the bold stroke of 
making the Prince and 
Hotspur of the same age ; 
in the earlier drama the 
hints of the rich humour, 
the inimitable comic ac- 
tion of Shakespeare's 
work, are also found. But 
that which came into the 
hands of the dramatist as 
crude ore left it pure 
gold, stamped with inef- 
faceable images. In the 
use of this raw material, 
Shakespeare came to his 
own and made it his own 
by virtue of searching in- 
sight into its ethical sig- 
nificance and complete 
mastery of its artistic re- 
sources. Other plays show 
the poet in higher moods, 
but none discloses so 
completely the full range 
of his power ; construe- 




THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 237 

tion, characterization, pathos, humour, wit, dramatic 
energy, and the magical Shakespearian touch are 
found in " Henry IV." in free and harmonious unity 
of dramatic form. In no other play is there greater 
ease in dealing with apparently discordant elements; 
nor is there elsewhere a firmer grasp of circum- 
stances, events, and persons in dramatic sequence 
and action. The play has a noble breadth of inter- 
est and action, a freedom of movement and vitality 
of characterization, which give it the first place 
among the historical dramas. 

The humour of Falstaff and the Q:reed and vul- 
garity of his ragged, disreputable but immortal fol- 
lowers reenforce the dignity of the play, which is 
sustained throuQ^hout at a o-reat height. Nothing: 
which is human escapes the clear, piercing, kindly 
gaze of this young master of character and destiny ; 
he sees so broadly and deeply that nothing repels 
him which has any touch of reality or soundness in 
it. In his hands, and preeminently in this play, 
the drama broadens to compass the full range of 
humour and character and experience ; and the 
tragic and humorous are blended, as in life, without 
incongruity or violation of the essential unities of 
human action and knowledge. Henry IV. and 
Hotspur are not blurred in outline, nor is the sig- 
nificance of their struggle obscured by the roister- 
ers and thieves who are at the heels of Falstaff. 
The heroic note of the old ideals of chivalry is 
sounded as distinctly as if the broad, rollicking 



238 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

humour of Falstaff had no existence. Falstaff is 
one of the most marvellous of Shakespeare's crea- 
tions ; a gross braggart, without conscience, and as 
simply and naturally unmoral as if there were no 
morals, Shakespeare has drawn him with such 
matchless vitality that, although the stage is 
crowded with great figures, he holds it as if it were 
his own. Sir John Oldcastle, whose character un- 
doubtedly gave Shakespeare a rough sketch of 
Falstaff, and whose name was originally used by 
Shakespeare, appears in the earlier play which the 
poet had before him ; in deference to the objections 
of the descendants of Sir John, the name was 
changed in the printed play, and became Falstaff, 
but there is reason to believe that the earlier name 
was retained in the acting play. There was ground 
for the objection to its use, for Sir John Oldcastle 
was a Lollard and a martyr. 

Shakespeare created a kind of English Bacchus 
at a time when every kind of fruit or grain that 
could be made into a beverage was drunk in vast 
quantities ; and sack, which was Falstaff's native 
element, was both strong and sweet. Falstaff is 
saved by his humour and his genius ; he lies, steals, 
boasts, and takes to his legs in time of peril, with 
such superb consistency and in such unfailing good 
spirits that we are captivated by his vitality. It 
would be as absurd to apply ethical standards to 
him as to Silenus or Bacchus ; he is a creature of 
the elemental forces ; a personification of the vitality 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 239 

which is in bread and wine ; a satyr become human, 
but moving buoyantly and joyfully in an unmoral 
world. And yet the touch of the ethical law is on 
him ; he is not a corrupter by intention, and he is 
without malice ; but as old age brings its searching 
revelation of essential characteristics, his humour 
broadens into coarseness, his buoyant animalism 
degenerates into lust; and he is saved from con- 
tempt at the end by one of those exquisite touches 
with which the great-hearted poet loves to soften 
and humanize degeneration. 

" Henry IV," is notable not only for the range and 
variety of types presented, but also for the freedom 
of manner which the poet permits himself. About 
half the first part is written in prose. Shakespeare 
was not alone among his contemporaries in break- 
ing with the earlier tradition which imposed verse 
as the only form upon the drama ; Jonson, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher used both prose and verse in 
the same drama ; but Shakespeare alone showed 
equal mastery over both forms. His prose is as 
characteristic and as perfect as his verse ; he turns 
indifferently from one to the other and is at ease 
with either. He makes the transition in many 
places for the sake of securing variety and height- 
ening certain effects which he wishes to produce, 
as he often introduces humorous passages into the 
most tragic episodes. 

Mr. Sill makes the interestingr suororestion that 

o 00 

verse being the natural form of expression for emo- 



240 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



tion, Shakespeare instinctively turned to prose when 
he was presenting ideas detached from emotion, when 

he wished to be 
logical rather 
than moving, 
and practical or 
jocular rather 
than philosoph- 
ical or serious ; 
and, verse be- 
ing essentially 
based on order 
and regularity, 
the poet turned 
to prose when- 
ever he wished 
to give expres- 
sion to frenzy 
or madness. 
There would 
have been essential incongruity in putting blank 
verse into the mouths of clowns, fools, drunkards, 
and madmen. These suggestions are of special 
interest when they are applied to " Hamlet." 

In " Henry IV.," as in " The Merry Wives of 
Windsor " and " The Taming of the Shrew," the 
references to Warwickshire are unmistakable ; the 
dramatist was still too near his youth to have 
forgotten persons and localities known in his boy- 
hood. 




FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 
From a picture in the possession of Colonel Harcourt. 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 24 1 

" Henry V.," drawn from the same sources, is a 
continuation of " Henry IV.," and presents in the 
splendid maturity of the king one of Shakespeare's 
great men of action ; a type in which his own time 
was rich, and in the dehneation of which, being 
himself a man of reflection and expression, the 
poet found infinite satisfaction. In this play 
the events of a reign are grouped for dramatic 
effectiveness, and war is dramatized on a great 
scale. The material is essentially epical, but the | 
treatment is so vigorous that the play, while not 
dramatic in the deepest sense, has the dignity and 
interest of a drama. The introduction of the 
Chorus, in which the dramatist speaks in person, 
shows how deeply he had meditated on his art, and 
how deliberately he had rejected the conventional 
unities of time, place, and action for the sake of the 
higher and more inclusive unity of vital experience. 
No other play so nobly expresses the deepening of 
the national consciousness at the end of the sixteenth 
century, and the rising tide of national feeling. 
The play is a great national epic ; and the secret 
of the expansion and authority of the English 
race is to be found in it. It was presented in the 
last year of the century, and probably in the Globe 
Theatre, then recently opened. 

" King Henry VIII." was written at least ten 
years later, and is distinctly inferior to the historical 
plays of the decade which closed with the produc- 
tion of " Henry V.," and is generally regarded as 



242 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a piece of composite work, Fletcher probably com- 
pleting that which Shakespeare had planned, but 
of which he had written only the first two acts. 

The historical plays belong, as a whole, to Shake- 
speare's earliest period of productiveness ; they keep 
the record of his apprenticeship ; they find their 
place in the first stage of his development. This 
was due only in a subordinate way to accident ; 
there was reason for it in the psychology of his 
art. The material for these plays was ready to his 
hand in the earlier chronicle plays in the libraries 
of the theatres, and in the records of Holinshed 
and Hall ; and there was ample stimulus for their 
production in their popularity. But other and 
deeper sources of attraction are not far to seek. 
These plays mark the transition from the epic to 
the drama ; from the story of events and persons 
as shaped by fate to the story of events and persons 
as they disclose the fashioning of character by 
action and the reaction of character on events, 
knitting men and actions together in a logical 
sequence and a dramatic order. The historical 
plays find their logical place in the order of devel- 
opment between the old plays dealing with histori- 
cal subjects and the masterpieces of Shakespeare 
and his contemporaries ; and in the unfolding of 
Shakespeare's art they hold the same middle place. 
These plays preserve the characteristics of the 
older plays and predict the fully developed drama ; 
they do not reveal the full play of the poet's genius 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 243 

nor the perfect maturity of his art, although the 
plays which deal with Henry IV. and Henry V. 
reveal the full range of his interests and his gifts. 
In these plays the young poet put himself in 
deepest touch with the life of his race, and, in 
bringing to clear consciousness the race spirit, 
brought out with the utmost distinctness the racial 
qualities of his own genius. He is preeminently 
the English poet, not only by virtue of his suprem- 
acy as an artist, but by virtue of the qualities of 
his mind; and these qualities were developed and 
thrown into striking relief by the historical plays. 
His greatest work was in other fields, but through 
no other work has he impressed himself so deeply 
on the imagination of the men of his own race. 
He vitalized a great section of English history, 
and has made it live before the eyes of ten gener- 
ations ; he set the figures of great Englishmen 
on so splendid a stage that they personify finally 
and for all time the characteristics of the English 
race ; he so exalted liberty as represented by the 
English temper and institutions that, more than 
any statesman, he has made patriotism the deepest 
passion in the hearts of Englishmen. No other 
poet has stood so close to the English people or 
affected them so deeply; and from the days when 
the earliest popular applause welcomed " Henry 
VI." on the stage of The Theatre, The Rose, and 
The Globe, to these later times when Irving's 
Wolsey crowds the stalls of the Lyceum, Shake- 



H4 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



speare has been the foremost teacher of English 
history. There are many who, if they were 
as frank as Chatham, would confess that they 
learned their history chiefly from him. 

In these plays, 
moreover, the 
young poet trained 
himself to be a 
dramatist by deal- 
ing with men under 
historical condi- 
tions ; with men in 
action. The es- 
sence of the drama 
as distinguished 
from other literary 
forms is action, and 
in the historical 
plays action is 
thrown into the 
most striking re- 
lief; sometimes at 
the sacrifice of 




SEAL OF THE ROYAL DRAMATIC COLLEGE. 



the complete devel- 
opment of the actors. Before taking up the pro- 
foundest problems of individual destiny or entering 
into the world of pure ideality, Shakespeare studied 
well the world of actuality. On a narrower stage, 
but in a hio;her lio^ht, he dealt with the relation of 
the individual to the political order, and showed 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 245 

on a great scale the development of character in 
relation to practical ends. The depths of his 
spiritual insight and the heights of his art are to 
be found in the Tragedies ; but the breadth, com- 
prehensiveness, and full human sympathy of his 
genius are to be found in the historical plays ; and 
in these plays, at the very beginning of his career, 
appeared that marvellous sanity which kept him 
poised in essential harmony between the divergent 
activities and aspects of life, gave him clearness of 
vision and steadiness of will, and made him the 
master of the secrets of character and destiny. The 
play of the divine law, which binds the deed to the 
doer, and so moralizes experience and makes it 
significant, is nowhere more clearly exhibited than 
in these many-sided dramas, with their rich diver- 
sity of character and their wide range of action. 
Shakespeare is one of the greatest of ethical 
teachers, not by intention, but by virtue of the 
depth and clearness of his vision. The historical 
plays reveal the justice of God working itself out 
through historical events and in the lives of histori- 
cal persons ; with the constant perception that no 
man is wholly good or evil ; that out of things evil 
good often flows ; that sin turns often, through 
the penitence of humility and service, into blessed- 
ness ; and that about the certain and evident play 
of the divine justice there is a mercy which is a 
constant mediation, and hints, at times, at a re- 
demption as inclusive as humanity. 



246 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Schlegel has well said of the historical plays that 
they are " a mirror for kings." In no other litera- 
ture is there so complete a portraiture of the gran- 
deur of the kingly ofifice and the uncertainty of 
the kingly character ; the pathos of the contrast 
between the weak man and the great place is often 
searching to the verge of irony. Shakespeare never 
permits his kings to forget that they are men, and 
the splendour of their fortunes sometimes serves 
to bring into ruthless light the inadequacy of their 
natural gifts for the great responsibilities laid upon 
them. The trappings of royalty heighten the crimi- 
nality of John and Richard III.; the eloquent senti- 
mentality of Richard II. and the ineffective saintli- 
ness of Henry VI. are thrown into high relief by the 
background of royal position ; the well-conceived and 
resolute policy of Henry IV. and the noble energy 
and decision of Henry V. — Shakespeare's typical 
king and the personification of the heroic, virile, 
executive qualities of the English nature — take on 
epical proportions from the vantage-ground of the 
throne. 

The contrast between the man and the king some- 
times deepens into tragedy when the desires and 
passions of the man are brought into collision with 
the duties of the king; for the king is always con- 
ceived as the incarnation of the State, the personi- 
fication of society. His deed reacts, not only upon 
himself, but upon the community of which he is the 
head, and whose fortunes are inextricably bound up 



THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 247 

with his fortunes. In the plays dealing with histor- 
ical subjects Shakespeare exhibits the divine order 
as that order is embodied in the State, and the trag- 
edies which occupy the great stage of public life 
arise from the collision of the individual with the 
State, of the family with the State, and of the 
Church with the State. The political insight and 
wisdom shown in this comprehensive ethical grasp 
of the relation of the individual to society in institu- 
tional life are quite beyond the achievements of any 
statesman in the range of English history ; for 
statecraft is everywhere, in the exposition of the 
dramatist, the application of universal principles of 
right and wise living to the affairs of State. Thus, 
on the great stage of histbry, Shakespeare, in the 
spirit of the poet and in the manner of the drama- 
tist, dramatized the spirit of man working out its 
destiny under historic conditions. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE COMEDIES 

During these prosperous five or six years Shake- 
speare's hand turned readily from history to com- 
edy and from comedy to history ; the exact order 
in which the plays of the period were written is 
unimportant so long as we are able to identify the 
group as a whole. The rising tide of creative 
energy, his mounting fortunes, and the deep fasci- 
nation of the spectacle of life evoked his humour 
and gave free play to the gayety of his nature 
and the buoyancy of a mind which played like 
lambent lightning over the whole surface of 
experience and knowledge. It is probable that 
he was at work on several plays at the same time ; 
taking up history or comedy as it suited his 
mood, and giving himself the rest and refresh- 
ment which come from change of work. It is 
certain that some of the Qrreater Trao-edies were 
slowly shaping themselves in his imagination 
from the earliest working years. " Romeo and 
Juliet" and "Hamlet" had taken root in his 
mind while he was yet an unknown apprentice 
in his craft; during these fertile years the germinal 
ideas which were to take shape in the entire body 

248 



THE COMEDIES 



249 



of his work were clarifying themselves in his 
consciousness ; while his hand was engaged with 
one subject his mind was dealing with many. 
He had already used the comedy form in " The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona," " The Comedy of 
Errors," and " Love's Labour's Lost," and had 




GARDEN OF DR. JOHN HALL'S HOUSE. 

made it clear to his contemporaries that he pos- 
sessed the genius of comedy — that rare, pene- 
trating, radiant, sane genius which was also the 
possession of Homer and Cervantes, and, later, 
of Moliere and Goethe — the genius which not 
only looks into human experience deeply, but 
sees it broadly and in true perspective. It was 
Shakespeare's ease of mind, derived from the 



250 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

largeness and deep humaneness of his view, 
which kept him sane during the years when he 
was Hving in the heart of tragedy; and this ease 
of mind found expression in the comedy. The 
Shakespearian comedy is a comedy of Hfe rather 
than of manners — a gay, sweet, high-spirited play 
with the weaknesses, follies, incongruities of men 
as these are projected against the great back- 
ground of the spiritual kinship and destiny of 
humanity. There is no touch in Shakespeare 
of that scorn which is the mood of those lesser 
men who see the details of human character but 
not the totality of its experience. Shakespeare 
was equally at home with the tragic and comic 
elements in human nature, because both spring 
from the same root. In dealing with the tragic 
forces he is always superior to them; at their worst 
they are rigidly limited in their destructive force ; 
he is not the victim of their apparent finality ; he 
sees through and beyond them to the immovable 
order of the world, as one sees through the brief 
fury of the storm to the untouched sun and un- 
moved earth which are hidden for a moment by 
the cloud. In like manner and for the same rea- 
son he laughs with men, but is saved from the 
cheapness of the sneer and the hard blindness of 
scorn. In his wide, clear, dispassionate vision he 
sees the contrast between the greatness of man's 
fortunes and the occasional littleness of his aims, 
the incongruities of his occupations, the exaggera- 



THE COMEDIES 



251 



tions and eccentricities of his manners. He is 
mirthful because he loves men ; it is only those 
who love us who can really laugh at and with us, 
and it is only men of great heart who have the gift 
of humour on a great scale. For humour, Dr. 
Bushnell says, " is the soul reeking with its own 
moisture, laughing because it is full of laughter, 
as ready to weep as to laugh ; for the copious 
shower it holds is good for either. And then, 
when it has set the tree a-dripping, 

" And hung a pearl in every cowslip's ear, 

the pure sun shining after will reveal no colour of 
intention in the sparkling drop, but will leave you 
doubting still whether it be a drop let fall by 
laughter or a tear." 

Later in life, for a brief period, Shakespeare's 
laughter lost its ring of tenderness, its overflowing 
kindness ; but his vision became clear again, and, 
although the spirit of mirth never regained its 
ascendency, the old sweetness returned. " Shake- 
speare is a well-spring of characters which are 
saturated with the comic spirit," writes George 
Meredith ; " with more of what we will call blood- 
life than is to be found anywhere out of Shake- 
speare ; and they are of this world, but they are of 
the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, 
and by great poetic imagination. They are, as it 
were — I put it to suit my present comparison — 
creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled 



252 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic 
exhibition of the narrower world of society. Jaques, 
Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of 
Clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen 
— marvellous Welshmen ! — Benedict and Beatrice, 
Dogberry and the rest, are subjects of a special 
study in the poetically comic." 

In " The Merchant of Venice " the poet finally 
emancipated himself from the influence of Marlowe, 
and struck his own note wath perfect distinctness. 
There is a suggestion of the "Jew of Malta " in 
Shylock, but the tragic figure about whom the 
play moves bears on every feature the stamp of 
Shakespeare's humanizing spirit. The embodiment 
of his race and the product of centuries of cruel 
exclusion from the larger opportunities of life. Shy- 
lock appeals to us the more deeply because he 
makes us feel our kinship with him. Marlowe's 
Jew is a monster; Shakespeare's Jew is a man 
misshapen by the hands of those who feed his 
avarice. 

The comedy was produced about 1596; it was 
entered in the Stationers' Register two years later, 
and was twice published in 1600. The dramatist 
drew freely upon several sources. There are evi-^ 
dences of the existence of an earlier play; the two 
stories of the bond, with its penalty of a pound of 
flesh, and of the three caskets were already known 
in English literature, and had been interwoven to 
form a single plot. A collection of Italian novels 



THE COMEDIES 



253 



of the fourteenth century and the well-known 
" Gesta Romanorum " contributed to the drama as 
it left Shakespeare's hands. As a play, it has 
obvious defects ; the story is highly improbable, 
and, as in at least three other plays, the plot in- 
volves bad law; for the poet, although sharing the 
familiarity of the dramatists generally with legal 
terms and phrases, shows that his knowledge was 
second-hand, or acquired for the occasion, by his 
misuse of well-known words of legal import. In 
invention in the matter of plots and situations 
Shakespeare was inferior to several of his contem- 
poraries; and he was content, therefore, to take 
such material as came to his hand with as much 
freedom as did Moliere. In this case, as in every 
other, he at once put his private mark on the 
general property and made it his own. He puri- 
fied the material, he put a third of the play into 
prose, and he imparted to the verse a beauty, a 
vigour, and a freedom from mannerisms which 
separate it at once from work of the apprentice 
period. He freely and boldly harmonized the 
tragic and comic elements; in Portia he created 
the first of those* enchanting women for whom no 
adjective has yet been found save the word Shake- 
spearian, for they^re a group by themselves; and 
he set on the stage the first of his great tragic 
figures. In 1596 the Jew was contemptible in the 
mind of western Europe; he was the personifica- 
tion I greed and subtlety, and he was under sus- 



254 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

picion of deeds of fiendish cruelty. He was 
robbed upon the shghtest pretext, stoned on the 
streets, and jeered at on the stage. His sufferings 
were food for mirth. In 1594, a Jew, who was 
acting as physician to the Queen, had been accused 
of attempting to poison EHzabeth, and had been 
hanged at Tyburn, and popular hate against the 
race was at fever-heat when Shakespeare put on 
the stage the Jew who has since been accepted as 
typical of his race. It is not probable that the 
dramatist definitely undertook to modify the popu- 
lar conception of the Jew ; his attention may have 
been directed to the dramatic possibilities of the 
character by the trial and execution of Dr. Lopez ; 
and when he dealt with the material at hand, he 
recast it in the light of his marvellous imagination, 
and humanized the central figure. Shylock was a 
new type, and he was not understood at first. For 
many years the part was played in a spirit of broad 
and boisterous farce, and the audiences jeered at 
the lonely and tragic figure. At every point in 
" The Merchant of Venice " the poet shows clearer 
insight than in his earlier work, deeper wisdom, 
greater freedom in the use of his material, and 
fuller command of his art. 

Shakespeare had an older play before him when 
he wrote " The Taming of the Shrew," and he 
followed its main lines of story so closely that the 
play as we now have it is an adaptation rather than 
an original work. That the dramatist was thinking 



THE COMEDIES 



255 



of the theatre and not of the public or of posterity is 
shown by the readiness with which he passed from 
the noblest creative work to the work of revision 
and adaptation. The earHer play gave him the 
idea of the Induction and the characteristic passages 
between Petruchio and Catharine, but was an 
inferior piece of work, full of rant, bathos, and 
obvious imitation of Marlowe ; the plot was followed, 
but the construction and style are new ; the story 
of Bianca and her lovers was worked in as a sub- 
sidiary plot, and, although the play sometimes 
passes over into the region of farce, it is charged 
with the comedy spirit. 

This comedy carries the reader back to the poet's 
youth, to Stratford and to Warwickshire. It is rich 
in local allusions, as are also " The Merry Wives of 
Windsor" and the second part of "Henry IV." 
There is no reason to doubt that Shakespeare's 
intercourse with Stratford was unbroken through 
these earlier years, though the difficulties and 
expense of travel may have prevented frequent 
visits. Now that prosperity and reputation were 
bringing him ease and means, his relations with his 
old home became more intimate and active. There 
are many evidences of his interest in Stratford and 
in his father's affairs, and it is evident that the son 
shared his rising fortunes with his father. The 
latter had known all the penalties of business failure ; 
he was often before the local courts as a debtor. 
He seems to have had a fondness for litigation. 



256 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

which was shared by his son. In the dramatist's 
time the knowledge of legal phrases among intelli- 
gent men outside the legal profession was much 
more general than it has been at any later time, but 
there is reason to believe that Shakespeare knew 
many legal processes at first hand. He bought and 
sold land, brought various actions for the recovery 
of debts, filed bills in chancery, made leases, and 
was engaged in a number of litigations. 

In 1596, after an absence of ten years from Strat- 
ford, the poet reappears in his native place as a 
purchaser of valuable lands and a rebuilder of his 
father's shattered fortune. In that year his only 
son, Hamnet, a boy of eleven, died and was buried 
in Holy Trinity Churchyard. In the same year 
John Shakespeare made application to the College 
of Heralds for the privilege of using a coat of arms. 
The claim was based on certain services which the 
ancestors of the claimant were declared to have ren- 
dered " the most prudent prince King Henry the 
Seventh of famous memorie." The ancestral distinc- 
tion put forward on behalf of John Shakespeare was 
not more apocryphal than the services set forth in 
many similar romances formally presented to the 
College of Arms as records of fact. The statement 
that the applicant's wife, Mary, heiress of Robert 
Arden, of Wilmcote, was the daughter of a gentle- 
man has not been verified. The application was 
granted three years later, and the Garter King of 
Arms assigned to John Shakespeare a shield: "gold. 



THE COMEDIES 257 

on a bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his 
crest or cognizance a falcon, his wings displayed 
argent, standing on a wreath of his colours, sup- 
porting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid." The 
motto, " Non Sans Droict," appears in a sketch or 
draft of the crest. Two years later the dramatist 
was styled " gentleman " in a legal document. 

This effort to rehabilitate his father was followed, 
a year later, by the purchase of New Place — a con- 
spicuous property at the northeast corner of Chapel 
Street and Chapel Lane, opposite the Guild Chapel, 
in Stratford, upon which stood what was probably 
the largest house in the town. This substantial 
house, built of timber and brick by Sir Hugh Clop- 
ton in the previous century, had probably been 
long neglected, and was fast going to decay. 

No clear account of the appearance of the house 
has been preserved ; but enough remains to show 
its considerable size and ' substantial structure. 
The walls of the larger rooms and probably the 
ceilings were covered with sunken panels of oak, 
some of which have been preserved. Nothing else 
now remains of the building save a few timbers 
which projected into the adjoining house, now used 
as a residence for the custodian of the Shakespeare 
properties, a fragment of the north wall, the well, 
pieces of the foundation, which are guarded by 
screens, the lintel, and an armorial stone. 

Shakespeare restored New Place, and enlarged 
its grounds by considerable purchases of land. At 



258 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



his death it passed into the possession of his daugh- 
ter, Susannah, the wife of Dr. John Hall, and in 
July, 1643, Queen Henrietta Maria was entertained 
for three days under its roof. Upon the death of 
Mrs. Hall, six years later, New Place became the 
property of her only child, Elizabeth, at that time 




DR. JOHN hall's HOUSE AT STRATFORD. 

the wife of Thomas Nashe, later the wife of Sir 
John Barnard, of Abingdon. Lady Barnard was 
the last of Shakespeare's direct descendants. 

At a later period the property came once more 
into the hands of the Clopton family, and was sub- 
sequently sold to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, a vicar 
in Cheshire, who appears to have been a person of 
considerable fortune, dull perception, and irritable 



THE COMEDIES 259 

temper. He resented the interest which visitors 
were beginning to show in the place ; in order to 
break up the growing habit of sitting under the 
mulberry tree, which was intimately associated with 
the dramatist, he cut the tree to the ground in 1756. 
This attitude towards the one great tradition of the 
town brought the owner of New Place into a disfa- 
vour with his fellow-townsmen which took on aearres- 
sive forms. The Stratford officials charged with 
the laying and collection of taxes made use of their 
power to secure the utmost farthing from Mr. Gas- 
trell, and that gentleman, in order to relieve himself 
of further taxes, pulled down the house, sold the 
materials, and left Stratford amid execrations which 
have been echoed in every succeeding generation. 
The house adjoining New Place was the property 
of one of the poet's friends, and now serves as a 
residence for the custodian and as a museum of 
Shakespearian relics. The adjoining house was 
the home of Shakespeare's friend, Julius Shaw, who 
was one of the witnesses to his will ; and, after 
various changes, it is still standing. New Place is 
to-day a green and fragrant garden ; the fragments 
of the original foundation are infolded in a lawn of 
velvet-like texture ; the mulberry tree has survived 
the vandalism of a hundred and fifty years ago ; 
behind the old site there is a small but perfectly 
kept park where many flowers of Shakespearian 
association may be found, where the air seems 
always fragrant and the place touched with abiding 



26o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

peace. The tower of Guild Chapel rises close at 
hand; in the near distance is the spire of Holy 
Trinity ; the Avon is almost within sight ; the 
earlier and the later associations of Shakespeare's 
life cluster about the place which he saw every day 
as a schoolboy, to which he returned in his prime, 
where he gathered his friends about him, and 
where he found reconciliation and, at last, peace. 

The purchase and restoration of New Place 
made Shakespeare a man of consequence among 
neifjhbours who could understand the value of 
property, however they might miss the signifi- 
cance of literature. In a letter, still extant, dated 
October 25, 1598, Richard Ouiney, whose son 
Thomas subsequently married Judith Shakespeare, 
appealed to the poet for a loan ; and there are 
other evidences that he was regarded as a man 
whose income afforded a margin beyond his own 
needs. 

The poet's acquaintance with country life in its 
humblest forms ; with rural speech, customs, and 
festivals; with sports and games; with village 
taverns and their frequenters, was so intimate 
and extensive that he used it with unconscious 
freedom and ease. No other contemporary drama- 
tist shows the same familiarity with manners, 
habits, and people ; an intimacy which must have 
been formed by a boy who made his first acquaint- 
ance with life in Warwickshire. These reminis- 
cences of boyhood, reenforced by the later and 



THE COMEDIES 



20I 



deliberate attention of a trained observer, con- 
tinually crop out in many of the plays, as the 
formations of an earlier geologic period often show 
themselves through the structure of a later period. 
The fertility of resource which gives the two 
parts of " Henry IV." such overflowing vitality 
made the writing of " The Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor" inevitable. It was quite impossible for the 




GREENWICH PALACE. 



dramatist to leave a character so rich in the 
elements of comedy as Falstaff without further 
development under wholly different conditions. 
In the Epilogue to " Henry IV." the dramatist 
promised to " continue the story with Sir John 
in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine 
of France"; but "Henry V." contained no refer- 
ence to the old knight save the brief but inimitable 
account of his death. Almost a century after the 
death of the Queen three writers reported almost 



262 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

simultaneously the tradition, apparently current 
at the time and probably of long standing, that 
Elizabeth was so delighted with the humour of 
Falstaff in " Henry IV." that she commanded 
Shakespeare to continue the story and show 
Falstaff in love. " I knew very well," wrote 
Dennis, by way of introducing an adaptation of 
the play in 1702, "that it had pleas'd one of the 
greatest queens that ever was in the world. . . . 
This comedy was written at her command and by 
her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted 
that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen 
days." Seven years later Rowe added the further 
information that " she was so well pleased with the 
admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts 
of ' Henry IV.' that she commanded him to con- 
tinue it for one play more, and to show him in 
love." The tradition apparently has been long 
accepted, and there are intrinsic evidences which 
make it credible. " The Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor " .is the kind of play which such a command 
would have secured. It is a comedy which con- 
tinually runs into broad farce ; there is no touch 
of pathos in it ; it deals with contemporaneous 
middle-class people, in whom the dramatist shows 
very little interest ; it is laid in Windsor, and con- 
tains references to the castle which must have 
been very acceptable to the Queen. The ground 
was evidently familiar to the dramatist, and there 
arc references of a realistic character, not only 



THE COMEDIES 263 

to Windsor, but to Stratford. Moreover, the play, 
although admirable in construction, is below the 
level of Shakespeare's work of this period in intel- 
lectual quality, and lacks those inimitable touches 
of humour and poetry which are the ineffaceable 
marks of his genius when it is working freely and 
spontaneously. 

The play owes little in the way of direct con- 
tribution to earlier sources, though various inci- 
dents used in it are to be found in Italian and 
other stories. It was probably written about 
1599, and the Queen, according to tradition, was 
" very well pleased with the representation." The 
plot is essentially Italian ; the introduction of the 
fairies was a revival of the masque ; but the atmos- 
phere of the play is entirely English ; it reflects 
the hearty, healthy, bluff spirit and manner of 
middle-class life in an English village. It is the 
only play dealing with the English life of his own 
time which Shakespeare wrote, and it undoubtedly 
reproduces conditions, manners, and habits which 
he had known at first hand in Stratford. Fal- 
staff shows a great decline in spontaneity, fresh- 
ness, and humour; he has become gross, heavy, 
and dull ; he easily falls a victim to very obvious 
devices against his dignity; he has sunk so low 
that he has become the butt of practical jokers. 
It is probable that this particular development 
of Falstaff was suggested to Shakespeare by 
Elizabeth rather than forced upon him by the 



264 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

expansive vitality of the character. As a whole, 
the play shows breadth of characterization and 
genuine humour, while Windsor and the country 
about it are sketched with unusual fidelity to 
detail, but with characteristic freshness of feeling 
for fields and woods. 

This homely comedy of middle-class English 
country life, with its boisterous fun, its broad hu- 
mour, and its realistic descriptive passages, was 
probably written not long before " Much Ado 
About Nothing," but the two plays present the 
most striking contrasts of method and manner. The 
Italian play is in an entirely different key ; it is 
brilliant, spirited, charged with vivacity, and spar- 
kling with wit ; it is a masterpiece of keen character- 
ization, of flashing conversation, of striking contrasts 
of type, and of intellectual energy, playing freely 
and buoyantly against a background of exquisite 
beauty. The dramatist was now completely eman- 
cipated from his earlier teachers, and had secured 
entire command of his own genius and of the re- 
sources of comedy as a literary form. In this 
splendid creation of his happiest mood in his most 
fortunate years, the prophecy of sustained and flash- 
ing interchange of wit in Lyly's court plays is am- 
ply fulfilled, and the promise of individual power of 
characterization clearly discerned in Biron and 
Rosaline is perfectly realized in Benedict and Bea- 
trice ; while Dogberry and Verges mark the perfec- 
tion of Shakespeare's skill in drawing blundering 



THE COMEDIES 265 

clowns. In this play the blending of the tragic and 
humorous or comic is so happily accomplished that 
the two contrasting elements flow together in a vital 
and exquisite harmony of experience, full of tender- 
ness, loyalty, audacity, and brilliancy ; the most com- 
prehensive contrast of character is secured in Hero 
and Claudio, Benedict and Beatrice, as chief actors 
in the drama, with Dogberry and Verges as centres 
of interest in the minor or subsidiary plot. Hazlitt 
declares with reference to this play that perhaps 
" the middle point of comedy was never more nicely 
hit, in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, 
and our follies, turning round against themselves in 
support of our affections, retain nothing but their 
humanity." In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" 
Shakespeare drew with a free hand the large and 
rather coarse qualities of English middle-class life ; 
in " Much Ado About Nothing " he presented a 
study of life in the highest stage of the social order, 
touched at all points with distinction of insight, 
characterization, and taste. The gayety and brill- 
iancy of the great world as contrasted with the little 
world of rural and provincial society are expressed 
with a confidence and consistency which indicate 
that the poet must have known something of the 
court circle and of the accomplished women who 
moved in it. 

Written probably about 1599, and drawing appar- 
ently for some features of the plot and comic inci- 
dents upon the inexhaustible Bandello and upon one 



266 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the greatest works of Italian genius, the " Orlando 
Furioso " of Ariosto, " Much Ado About Nothing " 
marks the highest point of Shakespeare's creative 
activity in comedy, and perhaps the most brilliant 
and prosperous hour in this prolific and fortunate 
period of his life. 

In the same year Shakespeare created his master- 
piece of poetic pastoral drama, " As You Like It." 
He was still in the sunlight, but the shadows were 
approaching ; his mood was still gay and his spirits 
buoyant, but the one was touched with premonitions 
of sadness and the other tempered by a deepening 
sense of the complexity of life and its mystery of 
good and evil. In the form and background of the 
play he was in touch with the love of pastoral life 
shared by many of the poets of his time ; by Lodge 
and Greene, by Spenser and Sidney. The Arcadia 
of literature was in his imagination, but the deep 
shadows and wide spaces of the Forest of Arden in 
Warwickshire were before his eye ; he knew the 
affected passion for flowering meads and gentle 
shepherds which were the stock-in-trade of many 
contemporaries, but he also felt that fresh and un- 
forced delight in nature which brings him in touch 
with the modern poets. He knew how to use the 
conventional poetic speech about nature, but he saw 
nature with his own eyes as clearly as Burns and 
Wordsworth saw her two centuries later. The plot 
of " As You Like It " was probably taken from 
Lodge's " Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden Legacie," 



THE COMEDIES 267 

an old-fashioned, artificial, pastoral romance, full of 
affectations and unrealities, based upon the much 
older " Tale of Gamelyn," which appeared in the 
fourteenth century and was handed down in several 
manuscripts of Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales," and 
was probably intended for use in a tale which the 
poet left unwritten. This old story belongs to the 
cycle of the Robin Hood ballads ; and Shakespeare 
had this origin of the story in mind when he wrote : 
" They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and 
a many merry men with him ; and there they live 
like the old Robin Hood of England." 

The woodland world of Arden, in which sonnets 
are affixed to ancient trees, and lovers, courtiers, and 
moralists live at ease, has much in common with 
the pastoral backgrounds of Spenser and Lodge ; 
but its artificiality is redeemed by its freshness of 
spirit, its out-of-door freedom, and its enchanting 
society. Rosalind and Orlando are the successors 
of a long line of pastoral lovers, but they, alone 
among their kind, really live. In Rosalind purity, 
passion, and freedom are harmonized in one of the 
most enchanting women in literature. In her 
speech love finds a new language, which is continu- 
ally saved from extravagance by its vivacity and 
humour. In Audrey and Corin the passion of 
Orlando and Rosalind is gently parodied ; in 
Touchstone the melancholy humour of Jaques is 
set out in more effective relief. There are threaten- 
ings of tragedy in the beginning of the play, but 



268 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

they are dissolved in an air in which purity and 
truth and health serve to resolve the baser designs 
of men into harmless fantasies. In Jaques, how- 
ever, there appears for the first time the student of 
his kind who has pierced the illusions of place and 
power and passion, and touched the underlying 
contradiction between the greatness of man's desires 
and the uncertainty and inadequacy of his achieve- 
ments. This sadness is touched with a not unkindly 
irony ; for Shakespeare's vision was so wide that he 
was rarely able to look at life from a single point ; 
its magnitude, its complexity, the rigour of its law, 
-and at the same time the apparent caprice with 
which its diverse fortunes w^ere bestowed, were 
always within his view. At the best, we seem to 
hear him say in this mood : 

All the- world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players. 

Jaques must not be taken too seriously, but 
there are hints of Hamlet's mood in his brooding 
meditation ; and through the whole play there is a 
vein of sadness which, mingled with its gayety and 
poetic loveliness, gives it a deep and searching 
beauty. 

In the Christmas season of 1601 "Twelfth 
Night " was presented in the noble hall of the Middle 
Temple. "At our feast," writes John Manningham, 
a member, in his diary, " we had a play called 
'Twelfth Night; or, What You Will' Much like 



THE COMEDIES 269 

the ' Comedy of Errors ' or ' Menaechmi ' in Plautus ; 
but most like and near to that in ItaHan called 
' Inganni.' A good practise in it to make the 
steward believe his lady widowe was in love with 
him, by counterfeiting as from his lady in general 




THE HALL OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE. 
Where " Twelfth Night " was played. 



terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and 
prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc., 
and then when he came to practise making him 
believe they took him to be mad." This charming 
comedy, so characteristic of Shakespeare's genius 



270 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

at play, was probably acted by the Lord Chamber- 
lain's servants, the company with which Shake- 
speare was associated, before the Court in the old 
palace at Whitehall during the same season. 

The ultimate source of the play was probably 
Bandello's " Novelle," though the Italian plays to 
which Manningham refers (there were several plays 
with the title Inganni) may have furnished incidents ; 
but Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Ague- 
cheek, Maria, and, above all, Viola, as they live in 
the comedy are Shakespearian to the heart. The 
framework of the play is essentially serious, a 
beautiful vein of poetic feeling runs through it, and, 
intermingled with these, the most unforced and 
uproarious fun. In inventiveness in the comic 
type and in freedom in handling it, as well as in 
grouping of diverse materials and fusing them into 
a harmonious and captivating whole, this comedy 
was never surpassed by the dramatist. He parted 
with the muse of comedy at the very moment when 
he had mastered the art of touching the weaknesses, 
follies, and minor sins of men with a touch which 
was keen with the wisdom of a Q-reat knowledge of 
the world, and gentle with the kindness of one who 
loved his kind for what they had lost rather than 
for what they had won. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 

With the advent of the seventeenth century, 
Shakespeare entered the greatest period of his Hfe 
as an artist — the period of the Tragedies. During 
eight eventful years he was brooding over the deep- 
est problems of human experience, and facing, with 
searching and unfaltering gaze, the darkest aspects 
of life. That this absorption in themes which bore 
their fruit in the Tragedies was due primarily to a 
prolonged crisis in his own spiritual life is rendered 
practically certain by the persistence of the sombre 
mood, by the poet's evident sensitiveness to and 
dependence upon conditions and experience, and 
by a series of facts of tragical import in the lives of 
some of his friends. His development in thought 
and art was so evidently one of definite progression, 
of the deepening of feeling and broadening of vision 
through the unfolding of his nature, that it is impos- 
sible to dissociate the marked change of mood which 
came over him about 1600 from events which touched 
and searched his own spirit. 

Until about 1595 Shakespeare had been serving 
his apprenticeship by doing work which was to a 
considerable extent imitative, and to a larger extent 

271 



272 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



experimental ; he had tried his hand at several kinds 
of writing, and had revealed unusual power of ob- 




;•,«":: 7mim. i&",g;«^'jga><»..i.^:. m:M,z::::z:^0^Sisswi^i &^^n^ssmsj; s^ 



THK SHAKESPEARE MONUMENT IN TRINrj'V CHURCH, STRA ri'(.)Rl). 

servation, astonishing dexterity of mind, and signal 
skill in making the traditional characters of the 
drama live before the eyes and in the imagination 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 273 

of the theatre-goers who made up his earliest con- 
stituency. From about 1594 to 1600 he had grown 
into harmonious and vital relations with his age, he 
had disclosed poetic genius of a very high order, 
and he had gone far in his education as a dramatist. 
He had written the Sonnets, and he had created 
Portia, Beatrice, Rosalind, Juliet, Romeo, Mercutio, 
Benedict, Henry V., Falstaff, Shylock, Hotspur, and 
Dogberry. If he had died in 1600, his place would 
have been secure. His reputation was firmly estab- 
lished, and he had won the hearts of his contempo- 
raries by the charm of his nature no less than by the 
fascination of his genius. 

His serenity, poise, and sweetness are evidenced 
not only by his work but by the representations of 
his face which remain. Of these the bust in the 
chancel of Holy Trinity Church at Stratford, made 
by Gerard Jonson, a native of Amsterdam, and a 
stone-mason of Southwark in the poet's time, and 
the Droeshout portrait, which appeared on the title- 
page of the First Folio edition of the poet's works, 
issued in 1623, were accepted by his friends and 
contemporaries, and must present at least a general 
resemblance to the poet's features. They are so 
crude in execution that they cannot do justice to 
the finer lines of structure or to the delicacy of 
colouring of Shakespeare's face and head, but they 
make the type sufficiently clear. They represent a 
face of singular harmony and regularity of feature, 
crowned by a noble and finely proportioned head. 



2 74 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



The eyes were hazel in colour, the hair auburn ; the 
expression, deeply meditative and kindly, was that 
of a man of thoughtful temper, genial nature, and 
thorough self-control. In figure Shakespeare was 
of medium stature and compactly built. 

It is significant that, after the first outburst of 
jealousy of the young dramatist's growing popu- 
larity in Greene's " A Groatsworth of Wit Bought 
with a Million of Repentance," the expressions 
of Shakespeare's contemporaries indicate unusual 
warmth of personal regard, culminating in a mag- 
nificent eulogy from his greatest rival, and one who 
had reason to fear him most. 

That he was of a social disposition, and met men 
easily and on pleasant terms, is evident from the 
extraordinary range of his knowledge of men and 
manners in the taverns of his time — those prede- 
cessors of the modern club. That he enjoyed the 
society of men of his own craft is evident both from 
his own disposition and from the fact that he stood 
so distinctly outside the literary and theatrical 
quarrels of his time. The tradition which asso- 
ciates him with the Mermaid Tavern which stood 
in Bread Street, not far from Milton's birthplace, is 
entirely credible. There he would have found many 
of the most brilliant men of his time. Beaumont's 
well-known description inclines one to believe that 
under no roof in England has better talk been heard : 

What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ? heard words that have been 



THE APPROACH OF- TRAGEDY 275 

So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life. 



The age was eminently social in instinct and 
habit; society, in the modern sense of the word, 
was taking shape ; and men found great attraction 
in the easy intercourse and frank speech of tavern 
meetings. Writing much later, but undoubtedly 
reporting the impression of Shakespeare's contem- 
poraries, Thomas Fuller says, in his " Worthies " : 
" Which two I beheld like a Spanish great gallion 
and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson (like 
the former) was built far higher up in learning; 
solid, but slow in his performances. Shake-spear, 
with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but 
lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack 
about, and take advantage of all winds, by the 
'quickness of his wit and invention." 

At the end of the sixteenth century Shakespeare 
was on the flood-tide of a prosperous life ; at the 
very beginning of the seventeenth century a deep 
and significant change came over his spirit. In 
external affairs his fortunes rose steadily until his 
death ; but in his spiritual life momentous expe- 
riences changed for a time the current of his 
thought, and clouded the serene skies in the light 
of which nature had been so radiant and life so 
absorbingly interesting to him. While it is highly 



276 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

improbable that the Sonnets record in chrono- 
logical order two deep and searching emotional 
experiences, the autobiographic note in them is un- 
mistakable ; it is impossible to avoid the conclusion 
that they express, if they do not literally report, a 
prolonged emotional experience culminating in a 
crisis which shook the very bases of his nature ; 
which brought him in the beginning an intense 
and passionate joy, slowly dissolving into a great 
and bitter agony of spirit; and issuing at last, 
through the moralization of a searching insight, 
in a larger and deeper harmony with the order of 
life. This experience, in which friendship and love 
contended for supremacy in his soul ; in which he 
entered into a new and humiliating consciousness 
of weakness in his own spirit, and in which he knew, 
apparently for the first time, that bitterness of dis- 
enchantment and disillusion which to a nature of 
such sensitiveness and emotional capacity as his 
is the bitterest cup ever held to the lips, found him- 
gay, light-hearted, buoyant, full of creative energy, 
and radiant with the charm and the dreams of 
youth ; it left him saddened in spirit, burdened 
with the consciousness of weakness, face to face 
with those tragic collisions which seem at times 
to disclose the play of the irony of fate, but out 
of which, in agony and apparent defeat, the larger 
and more inclusive harmony of the individual with 
the divine and the human order of society is secured 
and disclosed. 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 277 

Shakespeare drank deep of the cup of suffering 
before he set in the order of art, with a hand at 
once stern and tender, the colossal sorrows of his 
kind. Like all artists of the deepest insight, the 
keenest sensitiveness to beauty, and that subtle and 
elusive but magical spiritual sympathy which we 
call genius, which puts its possessor in command 
of the secret experience of his kind, Shakespeare's 
art waited upon his experience for its full capacity , 
of thought and feeling, and touched its highest 
points of achievement only when his own spirit 
had sounded the depths of self-knowledge and of 
self-surrender. In the great Tragedies life and art 
are so completely merged that they are no longer 
separable in thought; these dramas disclose the 
ultimate harmony between spirit and form. 

This searching inward experience was contempo- 
raneous in Shakespeare's life at the beginning of 
the seventeenth century with fierce dissensions be- 
tween his personal friends in his own profession, 
with growing bitterness of feeling and sharper antag- 
onism between the two great parties in England, 
and with a gradual but unmistakable overshadowing 
of the splendours of the " spacious days of great 
Elizabeth." What is known as " The War of 
the Theatres" was at its height between 1598 and 
1602; the chief combatants being Ben Jonson on 
one side, and Dekker and Marston on the other; 
the weapons of warfare, satirical plays. Thirteen 
or fourteen dramas are enumerated as having: their 



278 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



origin in the antagonism between the rival play- 
wrights, the best known and most important of these 
plays being Jonson's striking and characteristic 
comedy " Every Man in His Humour," and his 
" Poetaster." Dekker's " Satiromastrix " and Mars- 
ton's " What 
You Will" are 
chiefly inter- 
esting as form- 
ing part of the 
record of this 
vociferous war, 
and " The Re- 
turn from Par- 
n a s s u s " on 
account of one 
interesting but 
obscure refer- 
ence to Shake- 
speare which 
it contains: 
" Few of the 
University pen 
plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, 
and that writer Metamorphosis, and talke too much 
of Proserpina and Juppiter. Why, heres our fellow 
Shakespeare puts them all downe, I and Ben Jonson 
too. O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he 
brought up Horace giving the Poets a pill, but 
our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge 




BEN JONSON. 
From a picture in the possession of Mr. Knight. 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 279 

that made him beray his credit." These words 
were put into the mouth of the actor Kempe and 
spoken to the well-known actor Burbage, and Mr. 
Ward suggests that their meaning may be put into 
plain speech : " Our fellow, Shakespeare, ay, and 
Ben Jonson, too, puts down all the university play- 
writers," 

The reference to a purge administered by Shake- 
speare to Jonson has led to much speculation regard- 
ing Shakespeare's part in this professional quarrel, 
and " Troilus and Cressida " has sometimes been 
placed among the plays which contributed either 
light or heat to the discussion ; many of Shake- 
speare's characters have been identified by differ- 
ent critics with the leading combatants and with 
others among his contemporaries ; in no case, how- 
ever, has any speculation in this field secured a 
proper basis of proof. This very fact, taken in con- 
nection with Shakespeare's long and cordial rela- 
tions with Jonson, make it more than probable that 
the dramatist stood outside the arena, maintaining 
a friendly attitude toward both parties to the strife. 

The relations between Jonson and Shakespeare 
are in the highest degree creditable to both ; but it 
is probable that Shakespeare's sweetness of nature 
was the chief element in holding them on so high a 
plane. By gifts, temperament, difference of early 
opportunity, methods of work, conceptions of art, 
the two were for many years rivals for supremacy 
in the playwright's field. The contrast between 



28o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

them could hardly have been more marked. Jonson 
was nine years the junior of Shakespeare, having 
been born in 1573. His grandfather had been a 
clergyman, and he was the descendant of men of 
gentle blood. He was city born and bred ; at West- 
minster he came under the teaching of a man of 
great learning, William Camden, who made him a 
student and put the stamp of the scholar on his 
mind. He became a devout lover of the classics 
and a patient and thorough intellectual worker. 
Poverty forced him to work with his hands for a 
time, and when the War of the Theatres was at its 
height, his antagonists did not hesitate to remind 
him that he had been a bricklayer in his step- 
father's employ. From this uncongenial occupation 
he found escape by taking service in the Nether- 
lands, where he proved his courage by at least one 
notable exploit. He returned to London, and mar- 
ried at about the age at which Shakespeare took 
the same important step. He was a loyal and 
affectionate father, and a constant if not an ador- 
ing husband ; he described his wife many years 
after his marriage as "a shrew, yet honest." 

Like Shakespeare, he turned to the theatre as a 
means of support; appeared as an actor; revised 
and, in part, rewrote older plays ; collaborated with 
other playwrights. He lacked the faculty of adap- 
tation, the capacity for practical affairs, and the per- 
sonal charm which made Shakespeare successful as 
a man of business ; but, through persistent and 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 28 1 

intelligent work, he placed himself at the head of 
his profession. 

He was of massive build ; his face strong rather 
than sensitive or expressive ; his mind vigorous, 
orderly, and logical, rather than creative, vital, and 
spontaneous ; he was, by instinct, habit, and con- 
viction, a scholar ; saturated with the classical spirit, 
absolutely convinced of the fixed and final value of 
the classical conceptions and methods in art ; with 
a touch of the scholar's contempt for inaccuracy, 
grace, ease, flexibility. He was a poet by intention, 
as Shakespeare was a poet by nature; a follower 
and expounder of the classic tradition, as Shake- 
speare was essentially a romanticist; he achieved 
with labour what Shakespeare seemed to accomplish 
by magic ; he wrought out his plots with the most 
scrupulous care for unity and consistency, while 
Shakespeare appeared to take whatever material 
came to hand with easy-going indifference to the , 
niceties of craftsmanship. To a man of Jonson's 
rugged and somewhat sombre temper, the success 
and love which Shakespeare evoked with such ease 
must have seemed out of proportion to his desert ; 
while Shakespeare's methods of work must have 
seemed to him fundamentally defective and super- 
ficial. It was a case of great dramatic intelligence 
matched against great dramatic genius. When it 
is remembered that the two men were working in 
the same field and for the same audience, the inten- 
sity of their rivalry, and the provocations to jealousy 



282 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and ill feeling which would naturally rise out of it, 
become very clear. 

Shakespeare's generous nature, reenforced by his 
breadth of vision, apparently kept him free all his 
life from any touch of professional jealousy or ani- 
mosity. Jonson saw his rival pass him in the race 
for popular favour, and could hardly have been blind 
to the fact that Shakespeare distinctly distanced 
him in artistic achievement. He was a conscien- 
tious man, standing loyally for the ideals of his art ; 
he was a scholar, to whom accuracy in every detail 
was a matter of artistic morals ; but as the immense 
vitality of the age seemed to penetrate to the very 
source of his massive intellect and lift it above its 
laborious methods of work into the region of art, 
and to turn its painstaking patience into lyrical 
ease and grace, so Jonson's essential integrity of 
nature and largeness of mind forced upon him a 
recognition of his rival's greatness. It is true he 
sometimes criticised Shakespeare; he commented 
sharply on certain passages in " Julius Caesar," 
where Shakespeare was on his own ground ; he 
declared that Shakespeare had " small Latine and 
less Greek " ; that he " wanted art " ; that he ought 
to have " blotted a thousand " lines ; that he " had 
an excellent fancy ; brave notions and gentle 
expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility 
that sometimes it was necessary he should be 
stopped ; " but all these adverse opinions, for which 
there was, from Jonson's point of view, substantial 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 283 

ground, fall into true perspective and are evidences 
of discriminating judgment rather than uncritical 
eulogy when the passage in which they stand is 
taken in its entirety, to say nothing of the noble 
lines which appear in the First Folio. " I loved 
the man," wrote Jonson, " and do honour his mem- 
ory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was 
indeed honest, and of an open and free nature ; had 
an excellent fancy ; brave notions and gentle expres- 
sions. . . . There was more in him to be praised 
than pardoned." 

That there were occasional outbursts of impa- 
tience with Shakespeare's ease, spontaneity, and 
indifference to the taste and standards of men who 
were primarily scholars and only secondarily poets, 
is highly probable ; it could hardly have been other- 
wise. To men of plodding temper, of methodical 
habits of work, of trained faculties rather than of 
force and freedom of imagination, the facility of 
the man of genius often seems not quite normal 
and sound ; it is incomprehensible to them, and 
therefore they regard it with a certain suspicion. 
It is greatly to Jonson's credit, when his temper 
and circumstances are taken into account, that he 
judged Shakespeare so fairly and recognized his 
genius so frankly. 

There is good reason to believe that Shakespeare 
kept aloof from the professional quarrels of his time 
among his fellow-craftsmen, and that he was a kind 
of peacemaker among them ; his kindliness went 



284 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

far to disarm the hostility of those who differed 
with him most widely on fundamental questions of 
art. It is an open question, which has been dis- 
cussed with ability on both sides, whether Jonson 
had Shakespeare in mind in a striking passage in 
" The Poetaster " ; it is quite certain that he could 
hardly have described Shakespeare's genius more 
aptly : 

His learning labours not the school-like gloss 
That most consists of echoing words and terms. 
And soonest wins a man an empty name ; 
Nor any long or far-fetch'd circumstance 
Wrapp'd in the curious generalities of arts, 
By a direct and analytic sum 
Of all the worth and first effects of art. 
And for his poesy, 'tis so ramm'd with life, 
That it shall gather strength of life with being, 
And live hereafter more admired than now. 

Deeper matters than occasional references to his 
lack of scholarship, and sharp antagonisms among 
the men with whom he worked and among whom 
he lived, pressed on Shakespeare's mind and heart 
in the opening years of the seventeenth century. 
The reign of Elizabeth was drawing to its close, 
under a sky full of ominous signs. The splendour 
of the earlier years, which has given the reign a 
place among the most magnificent epochs in the 
annals of royalty, had suffered, not an eclipse, but 
a slow clouding of the sky, a visible fading of the 
day. The Queen had become an old and exacting 
woman, craving a love which she knew was not 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 



285 



given her, and an admiration which she could no 
longer evoke. She still held her place, but she 
understood how eagerly many w^ho surrounded her 
with service and protestations of devotion were 
waiting for the 
end and the 
chances of pro- 
motion in a 
new court. 
While they 
were praising 
her immortal 
youth, they 
were writing 
to James in 
Scotland that 
she was aging 
rapidly and 
that the end 
was at hand. 
There were 
faces, too, that 
must h ave 
been missed by the lonely sovereign as she looked 
about her. When she signed the death-warrant of 
Essex, she ended the career of one of the most 
brilliant men of the age, and one of her most 
devoted servants. Southampton was sentenced to 
death at the same time, but his sentence was com- 
muted to imprisonment for life. The people firmly 




ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX. 

After the original of Walker in the collection of the Marquis of 
Stafford. 



286 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

believed in Essex's innocence of any designs upon 
the Queen, and her haughty refusal to listen to the 
pleas made in his behalf turned their hearts against 
her. The Earl of Southampton was not a man of 
sound judgment or of cool temper; but there were 
in him a generosity of spirit, a loyalty to his friends, 
and a charm of temper and manners which bound 
men to his person and his fortunes. 

Through him there is every reason to believe 
that Shakespeare was drawn into close relations 
with Essex, who was, like Southampton, a man 
who lacked the qualities of character necessary for 
success in a period of conflicting movements and 
sharp antagonistic influences, but who had a win- 
ning personality. In the prologue to the fifth act 
of " Henry V." Shakespeare made an unmistakable 
allusion to Essex, and one which showed how near 
Southampton's friend was to his heart : 

Were now the general of our gracious empress, 
As in the good time he may, from Ireland coming, 
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, 
How many would the peaceful city quit 
To welcome him ! 

Later, when the plot against the ruling party at the 
court was on the point of execution, the play of 
" Richard II." was put on the stage of the Globe 
Theatre and elsewhere for the purpose of awaken- 
ing and giving direction to popular indignation 
against the men about the Queen. It is probable 
that the play produced under these circumstances, 




< 

w 

Q 
O 

w 
K 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 287 

and at the instigation of the organizers of the 
ill-fated enterprise, was Shakespeare's well-known 
drama. This play never had the approval of the 
Queen, who disliked its theme. There is no evi- 
dence beyond this fact to connect Shakespeare with 
the plot which sent Essex to the block. It is highly 
improbable that so rash an enterprise would have 
secured his support. It was not necessary that he 
should follow Essex's fortunes in order to love him. 
Deficient in strength and ability both as a soldier 
and a politician, Essex knew how to charm not 
only the crowd but those who stood near him. 
His face has that touch of distinction which is far 
more captivating than many more solid qualities. 
He had the gracious air of a benefactor; there was 
an atmosphere of romance and adventure about 
him ; he was a lover of the arts and the friend and 
patron of writers, who recognized and rewarded his 
generosity in a flood of dedications full of melodious 
praise. The temper of the age was personified in 
these two ardent, passionate, adventurous, brilliant 
personalities far more truly than in many men of 
cooler temper and more calculating spirit. It is 
significant that the representative men of the 
Elizabethan period rarely husbanded the fruits of 
their genius and perils ; they lived too much in the 
imagination to secure those substantial gains which 
men of lesser ability but greater prudence laid up 
for themselves. Drake, Raleigh, Sidney, Essex, 
Spenser, were splendid spenders of energy, time, 



288 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

genius, and opportunity, rather than hoarders of 
money, influence, and power. Shakespeare gave 
full value to sagacity, prudence, and poise of char- 
acter, but he loved the adventurers because the 
light of the imagination was on their careers and 
the touch of tragedy on their fortunes. 

It is easy to understand, therefore, how deeply 
the fate of Essex and Southampton weighed upon 
his heart. In their downfall the iron entered 
his own soul. When Elizabeth died in 1603, he 
remained silent while the chorus of poets filled the 
air with plaintive eulogy. Chettle complained that 
"the silver-tongued Melicert," as he called Shake- 
speare, did not " drop from his honied muse one 
sable tear." 

The temper of the time had changed, and there 
were unmistakable signs of the approaching storm. 
The deep cleavage which w^as to divide the English 
people for many decades began to be visible. The 
Puritan spirit was steadily rising under the pressure 
of restriction and persecution ; the deep springs of 
gayety in the English nature, which ran to the sur- 
face in all manner of festivals and merry-making, in 
a passion for music and an almost universal know- 
ledge of the art, in the habit of improvising songs 
and a general appreciation of the singing quality 
which gave English literature almost a century of 
spontaneous and captivating song-writing, were 
beginning to flow less freely and with diminished 
volume. 



THE APPROACH OF TRAGEDY 289 

It was not, therefore, a matter of accident, or as 
a result of deliberate artistic prevision, that, about 
1 60 1, Shakespeare began to write tragedies, and 
continued for seven or eight years to deal with the 
most perplexing and sombre problems of character 
and of life. He had passed through an emotional 
experience which had evidently stirred his spirit to 
the depths ; the atmosphere in which he lived was 
disturbed by bitter controversies ; men whom he 
honoured and loved had become the victims of a 
tragic fate; and the age was troubled with forebod- 
ings of coming strife. The poet was entering into 
the anguish of suffering and sharing the universal 
experience of loss, surrender, denial, and death. 
He had buried his only son, Hamnet, in the sum- 
mer of 1596; in the autumn of 1601 his father, in 
whose fortunes he had manifested a deep inter- 
est, died at Stratford, and was buried in the quiet 
churchyard beside the Avon. The poet had learned 
much of life ; he was now to learn much of death 
also. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 

The order of the appearance of the Tragedies 
has not been definitely settled ; they were written, 
however, in the same period, and that period began 
about 1601 and ended about 1609. The poet was 
at work on these masterpieces during the closing 
years of the reign of Elizabeth and the early years 
of the reign of James First. While he was medi- 
tating upon or writing " Julius Caesar," Essex and 
Southampton had embarked upon their ill-planned 
conspiracy, and one had gone to the block and the 
other was lying in the Tower ; soon after finishing 
" Coriolanus," the poet left London and returned to 
Stratford. The first decade of the seventeenth 
century was, therefore, his "storm and stress" 
period. Its chief interest lies in its artistic prod- 
uct, but the possible and probable relations of his 
artistic activity to his personal experience have 
been indicated. Those relations must not be in- 
sisted upon too strenuously ; in a sense they are 
unimportant; the important aspect of the work of 
this decade lies in the continuity of mood and 
of themes which it represents, and in the mastery 
of the dramatic art which it illustrates. 

290 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 



291 



During these days Shakespeare dealt continu- 
ously with the deepest problems of character with 
the clearest insight and the most complete com- 




THE AMERICAN FOUNTAIM AisD CLOCK- TuWEK, STRATFORD. 



mand of the resources of the dramatic art. It is 
significant of the marvellous harmony of the expert 
craftsman with the poet of superb imagination that 
the plays of this period have been at the same time 
the most popular of all the Shakespearian dramas 



292 WILLIAM Shakespeare: 

with theatre-goers and the most deeply studied by 
critical lovers of the poet in all parts of the world. 

Shakespeare had read Holinshed and Hall with 
an insight into historic incident and character quite 
as marvellous in its power of laying bare the sources 
of action and of vitalizinor half-forgotten actors in 
the drama of life as the play of the faculty of in- 
vention, and far more fruitful ; he now opened the 
pages of one of the most fascinating and stimulating 
biographers in the whole range of literature. It 
is doubtful if any other recorder of men's lives 
has touched the imagination and influenced the 
character of so many readers as Plutarch, to whom 
the modern world owes much of its intimate and 
vital knowledge of the men who not only shaped 
the destinies of Greece and Rome, but created the 
traditions of culture which influenced Shakespeare's 
age and contemporaries so deeply. Part of Plu- 
tarch's extraordinary influence has been due to the 
inexhaustible interest of his material and part to 
the charm of his personality. He was and will 
remain one of the great interpreters of the classical 
to the modern world ; a biographer who breathed 
the life of feeling and infused the insight of the 
imagination into his compact narratives. It has 
well been said of his work that it has been " most 
sovereign in its dominion over the minds of great 
men in all ages"; and the same thought has been 
r suggested in another form in the description of 
I that work as " the pasturage of great minds." 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 293 

Sir Thomas North's EngHsh version of " The 
Lives of the Noble Grecians, compared together by 
that grave learned philosopher and historiographer 
Plutarke, of Chaeronia, translated out of Greek 
into French by James Amyot, Abbot of Belloxane, 
Bishop of Auxerre, one of the King's Privy Coun- 
cil, and great Amner of France, and now out of 
French into English by Thomas North," was pub- 
lished in 1579, while Shakespeare was coming to 
the end of his school days in the Grammar School 
at Stratford ; and it forms one of that group of 
translations, including Chapman's " Homer," Florio's 
" Montaigne," and Fairfax's " Tasso," which, in their 
influence, must be ranked as original contributions 
to Elizabethan literature. Plutarch is not only the 
foremost biographer in the history of Letters, he 
had the further good fortune to attract a reader 
who, more than any other, has disclosed the faculty 
of grasping the potential content of a narrative, as 
well as mastering its record of fact. It is one of 
Plutarch's greatest honours that he was the chief 
feeder of Shakespeare's imagination during the 
period when his genius touched his highest mark 
of achievement; for it was in Plutarch that the 
poet found the material for three of the greatest of 
the Tragedies, " Julius Csesar," " Antony and Cleo- 
patra," and " Coriolanus," and, in part, for " Timon 
of Athens." Not only did he find his material in 
Plutarch, but he found passages so nobly phrased, 
whole dialogues sustained at such a height of dig- 



294 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



nity, force, or eloquence, that he incorporated them 
into his work with essentially minor changes. 
Holinshed furnished only the bare outlines of 

movement for 
"Richard II." 
and "Richard 
III.," but Plu- 
tarch supplied 
traits, hints, sug- 
gestions, phrases, 
and actions so 
complete in 
themselves that 
the poet needed 
to do little but 
turn upon the bi- 
ographer's prose 
his vitalizing and 
organizing imag- 
ination. The dif- 
ference between 
the prose biog- 
rapher and the 
dramatist re- 
mains, however, a difference of quality so radical as 
to constitute a difference of kind. The nature and 
extent of Shakespeare's indebtedness to the works 
upon which he drew for material may be most clearly 
shown by placing in juxtaposition Mark Antony's 
famous oration over Cesar's body as Shakespeare 




MIDDLE TEMPLE LANE. 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 



295 



found it and as he left it : " When Caesar's body," 
writes Plutarch, " was brought into the market- 
place, Antonius making his funeral-oration in 
praise of the dead, according to the ancient custom 
of Rome, and perceiving that his words moved the 
common people to compassion, he framed his elo- 
quence to make their hearts yearn the more, and 
taking Caesar's gown all bloudy in his hand, he 
layed it open to the sight of them all, shewing what 
a number of cuts and holes it had in it. There- 
with all the people fell presently into such a rage 
and mutinie that there was no more order kept 
among the common people." 

A magical change has been wrought in this nar- 
rative when it reappears in Shakespeare's verse in 
one of his noblest passages : 

You all do know this mantle : I remember 

The first time ever Caesar put it on ; 

'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, 

That day he overcame the Nervii : 

Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through ; 

See what a rent the envious Casca made ; 

Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd ; 

And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, 

Mark how the blood of Csesar follow'd it, 

As rushing out of doors, to be resolved 

If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no ; 

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel : 

Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him ! 

This was the most unkindest cut of all ; 

For when the noble Caesar saw him stab. 

Ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms, 

Quite vanquish'd him : then burst his mighty heart : 



296 ' WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 

Even at the base of Pompey's statua. 

Which all the while ran blood, great Csesar fell. 

"Julius Caesar" probably appeared in 1601. 
Many facts point to this date, among them the oft- 
quoted passage from Weever's " Mirror of Mar- 
tyrs," which was printed in that year : 

The many-headed multitude were drawn 

By Brutus' speech, that C^sar was ambitious. 

When eloquent Mark Antonie had shewn 

His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious? 

A little later, in a still greater play, Polonius, recall- 
ing his life at the University, said: 

I did enact Julius Caesar : I was killed i' the Capitol : 
Brutus killed me. 

The story, like many others with which Shake- 
speare dealt, was popular, and had been presented 
on the stage at an earlier date. Shakespeare's 
rendering was so obviously superior to all its prede- 
cessors that it practically put an end to further 
experiments with the same theme. 

In the English historical plays the dramatist 
never entirely broke with the traditional form and 
spirit of the Chronicle play ; in his first dealing 
with a Roman subject he took the final step from 
the earlier drama to the tragedy. " Julius Csesar " 
is not, it is true, dominated by a single great char- 
acter, as are the later Tragedies, but it reveals a 
rigorous selection of incidents with reference to 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 297 

their dramatic value, and a masterly unfolding of 
their significance in the story. The drama was not 
misnamed ; although Ccesar dies at the beginning 
of the dramatic movement, his spirit dominates it 
to the very end. At every turn he confronts the 
conspirators in the new order which he personified, 
and of which he was the or^anizinQ^ o;enius. Cas- 
sius dies with this recognition on his lips : 

Cassar, thou art revenged, 
Even with the sword that kill'd thee. 

And when Brutus looks on the face of the dead 

Cassius he, too, bears testimony to a spirit which 

was more potent than the arms of Octavius and 

Antony : 

O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet ! 

Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords 

In our own proper entrails. 

This new order in the Roman world, personified 
by Ccesar, is the shaping force of the tragedy ; 
Octavius represents without fully understanding it, 
and Brutus and Cassius array themselves against 
it without recognizing that they are contending 
with the inevitable and the irresistible. At a later 
day, the eloquent and captivating Antony, a man 
of genius, enthusiasm, and personal devotion, but 
without the coordinating power of character, flings 
himself against this new order in the same blank 
inability to recognize a new force in the world, and 
dies as much a victim of his lack of vision as 
Brutus and Cassius. Nowhere else is Shakespeare's 



298 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sense of reality, his ability to give facts their full 
weight, more clearly revealed than in " Julius Caesar." 
Brutus is one of the noblest and most consistent 
of Shakespearian creations ; a man far above all 
self-seeking and capable of the loftiest patriotism ; 
in whose whole, bearing, as in his deepest nature, 
virtue wears her noblest aspect. But Brutus is an 
idealist, with a touch of the doctrinaire ; his pur- 
poses are of the highest, but the means he employs 
to give those purposes effect are utterly inadequate ; 
in a lofty spirit he embarks on an enterprise doomed 
to failure by the very temper and pressure of the 
age. "Julius Caesar" is the tragedy of the conflict 
between a great nature, denied the sense of reality, 
and the world-spirit. Brutus is not only crushed, 
but recognizes that there was no other issue of his 
untimely endeavour. 

The affinity between Hamlet and Brutus has 
often been pointed out. The poet was brooding 
over the story of the Danish prince probably before 
he became interested in Roman history ; certainly 
before he wrote the Roman plays. The chief actors 
in both dramas were men upon whom was laid the 
same fatal necessity ; both were idealists forced to 
act in great crises, when issues of appalling magni- 
tude hung on their actions. Their circumstances 
were widely different, but a common doom was on 
both ; they were driven to do that which was against 
their natures. 

In point of style "Julius Ceesar " marks the cul- 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 299 

mination of Shakespeare's art as a dramatic writer. 
The ingenuity of the earher plays ripened in a rich 
and pellucid flexibility ; the excess of imagery gave 
place to a noble richness of speech ; there is deep- 
going coherence of structure and illustration ; con- 
structive instinct has passed on into the ultimate 
skill which is born of complete identification of 
thought with speech, of passion with utterance, of 
action with character. The long popularity of the 
play was predicted by Shakespeare in the words of 
Cassius : 

How many ages hence 

Shall this, our lofty scene, be acted over 

In States unborn and accents yet unknown. 

The great impression made by " Julius Caesar " 
in a field which Jonson regarded as his own prob- 
ably led to the writing of " Sejanus," which ap- 
peared two years later, and of " Catiline," which 
was produced in 161 1. A comparison of these 
plays dealing with Roman history brings into clear 
relief the vitalizing power of Shakespeare's imagina- 
tion in contrast with the conscientious and scholarly 
craftsmanship of Jonson. In " Sejanus " almost every 
incident and speech, as Mr. Knight has pointed 
out, is derived from ancient authorities, and the 
dramatist's own edition of the play was packed 
with references like a text-book. The characters 
speak with admirable correctness after the manner 
of their time; but they do not live. Brutus, Cas- 
sius, Antony, Portia, on the other hand, talk and act 



300 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



like living creatures, and the play is saturated with 

the spirit and enveloped in the atmosphere of Rome. 

The story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, like 

that of Dr. Faustus, had a long and wide popularity 

before it found 
place among 
the classics. 
There was 
much in both 
tales which ap- 
pealed to the 
popular imagi- 
nation ; there 
was a touch of 
the supernatu- 
ral in both, and 
the Renais- 
sance mind 
still loved the 
supernatural ; 
there was in 
both an abun- 
dance of hor- 
ELizABETH. YOTS, aud thc 

From an old print. ^f ShakC" 

speare craved strong incitements of the imagina- 
tion ; and in both there was a combination of story 
and psychologic interest which appealed from the 
beginning to the crowds who frequented the thea- 
tres, and, later, to the greatest of modern poets. In 




THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 30I 

this fusion of immediate human interest with the 
very highest and most complex problems of charac- 
ter and destiny these two stories are unique ; and it 
is due to the presence of these qualities that, in 
their final versions, these stories hold the first place 
amonor those dramas which deal with the ultimate 
questions of life. 

Saxo Grammaticus, who lived about the year 1200, 
midway between the earliest crusades and the dis- 
covery of America, was, as his name suggests, a 
man of unusual learning. He was the earliest 
Danish writer of importance, and his Latin style 
evoked the admiration of so competent an authority 
as Erasmus, who expressed his surprise that a Dane 
of that age should be able to command such a " force 
of eloquence." The great work of this brilliant 
Latinist was the Historia Danica, or " History of 
the Danes " ; written, there is reason to believe, with 
Livy as a model. This history, like all other histo- 
ries of that age, was largely made up of mythical 
and legendary tales chiefly illustrative of heroic 
persons and incidents. One of the most striking 
of these hero stories is that which relates the tragi- 
cal experiences of Hamlet; in his origin possibly 
one of those mythical figures who typified the forces 
of nature in the Norse mythology. The roots of 
great works of art are sunk deep in the soil of 
human life ; and a creation of the magnitude of the 
Hamlet of Shakespeare always rests on a broad, 
solid foundation of prehistoric myth, or legend, or 



302 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



semi-historic tradition. Characters of such world- 
wide significance and such typical experience as 
Hamlet and Faust are, in a sense, the children of 
the race and are born in those fertile ages when the 
imagination plays freely and creatively upon the ex- 
ternal world and upon the facts of human experi- 
ence. In the pages of Saxo Grammaticus, Hamlet 
is a veritable man, caught in a network of tragical 
circumstances, feigning madness to protect himself 
from an uncle who has killed his father, seized the 
throne, and married Hamlet's mother, and who 
seeks to entrap Hamlet by many ingenious devices. 
A crafty old courtier plays the eavesdropper ; a 
young girl is put forward as part of the plot against 
Hamlet ; he is sent to England and secret orders to 
put him to death are sent with him. In the end 
Hamlet's feigning saves him ; he kills the usurper, 
explains his deed in an address to the people, and is 
made king. 

This group of incidents constitute the story of 
Hamlet in its earliest recorded form, which was prob- 
ably the survival of earlier and mythical forms. In 
the fifteenth century the story was widely known 
throughout Northern Europe, where it had the 
currency of a popular folk-tale. About 1570 it was 
told in French in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiq^les. 
That there was an English play dealing with Ham- 
let as early as 1589 is now generally believed. In 
that year Greene made an unmistakable reference 
to such a play ; and seven years later Lodge wrote 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 303 

of " the wisard of a ghost, which cried so miserably 
at the theatre, Hke an oyster-wife, Hamlet revenged 
That startUng cry of the ghost appears to have made 
a deep impression on the imagination of the time, 
and was heard on the stage again and again in later 
plays. 

This earlier English version of Hamlet has dis- 
appeared, but the probabilities point to Thomas 
Kyd, whose " Spanish Tragedy " was one of the 
most popular plays of the age, as its author; there 
are obvious similarities between the plays. The 
introduction of the ghost was in keeping with the 
traditions of the English stage and the temper of 
the time. This earlier version of the tragedy was 
probably a very rough study, so far as action 
was concerned, of Shakespeare's work ; some frag- 
ments of it may have been used by the dramatist 
in the earlier sketches of his own version ; and 
some remnants of it are to be found, perhaps, 
in a German version, which is probably a copy of 
a translation used in that country by English actors 
not much later than Shakespeare's time. It is 
probable that both the author of the lost version 
and Shakespeare read the story in Belleforest's 
French version. 

There are very perplexing questions connected 
with the text of " Hamlet " as it is found in differ- 
ent editions ; the probability is that Shakespeare 
worked his material over more than once, revising 
and, in part, recasting it. There is reason to 



304 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

believe also that the story found a lodgement In his 
imagination at an early day, and that it slowly took 
shape, widening in its significance with his experi- 
ence, and striking deeper root in the psychology of 
the human spirit as his insight into life deepened. 
This was the history of the growth of the Faust 
idea in Goethe's mind. The play probably ap- 
peared in 1602. In that year the edition known as 
the First Quarto was published, with the announce- 
ment on the title-page that the piece had been 
" acted divers times in the city of London, as also 
in the two Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and 
elsewhere." Although the longest of the Shake- 
spearian plays, and farthest removed from the 
ordinary interests of theatre-goers, " Hamlet " has 
not only been critically studied and widely com- 
mented upon, but has been put upon the stage of 
every civilized country and has awakened an unfail- 
ing popular interest. The dramatic movement is 
much slower than in most of the dramas ; the plot 
unfolds very gradually ; there are a number of 
scenes in which the interest is almost wholly psy- 
chological ; but the spell of the play has been felt as 
keenly by the unlearned as by the cultivated, and 
the story has appealed as directly to the crowds 
before the footlights as to students and critics. 
There is no higher evidence of Shakespeare's 
genius than this presentation of a great spiritual 
problem in a form so concrete and with such mar- 
vellous distinctness of characterization that " Ham- 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 



305 



let " as a great world-drama and " Hamlet " 
engrossing stage play may be seen on the 
stage on the same night. 

The rough sketch upon 
which Shakespeare worked 
had all the characteristics of 
the Elizabethan play ; it was 
sanguinary, noisy, full of move- 
ment, action, crime ; it was 
written for the groundlings. 
Upon this elemental basis, 
with its primary and immedi- 
ate elements of human inter- 
est, Shakespeare built up a 
drama of the soul, which never 
for a moment loses touch with 
reality, and never for a mo- 
ment loses its universal sig- 
nificance. In the pathetic 
figure of Hamlet, with his gifts 
of genius and personal charm, 
every generation has recog- 
nized the protagonist of hu- 
manity. The concentration of 
interest, the intensity of feel- 
ing, the hushed passion, which 
characterize the play, make us 
feel that it had some excep- 
tionally close relation to the 
poet's experience, and that in 



as an 
same 




306 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

an unusual degree his personality pervades it. There 
is nothing to connect it with the happenings of his 
own life and the development of his own spirit save 
the fact that it falls within the tragic period and 
that it immediately precedes two of his most som- 
bre dramas. The authenticity of an autograph of 
Shakespeare on a fly-leaf of a copy of Florio's 
Montaigne in the British Museum is doubted, but 
there are passages in " Hamlet " which are reminis- 
cent of Montaigne's speculations and reflections. 
It was in his own nature, however, that Shake- 
speare found the questionings, the perplexities, 
the deep and almost insoluble contradictions, which 
are presented with such subtle suggestiveness in 
" Hamlet." 

No play has called forth so vast a literature or 
has been the subject of so much criticism and inter- 
pretation. The problem presented by Hamlet is 
so many-sided that it will evoke the thought and 
ingenuity of every successive generation of students. 
Much has been done, however, in removing obscuri- 
ties, and discussion has cleared the air of some 
confusing mists. That Hamlet was sane is the 
conviction of the great majority of the students of 
the play ; an insane Hamlet would rob the drama 
of its spiritual significance and destroy its authority 
as a work of art. That in his long feigning Hamlet 
sometimes lost for the time the clear perception of 
the difference between reality and his own fancies 
is probable; but he is at all times a responsible 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 307 

actor In the drama of which he is the central figure. 
Goethe's exposition of his nature and his fate 
remains one of the classics of Shakespearian criti- 
cism, so clear and definite is its insight into one 
aspect of Hamlet's character. 

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, 
Tliat ever I was born to set it right ! 

" In these words, I imagine, is the key to Hamlet's 
whole procedure, and to me it is clear that Shake- 
speare sought to depict a great deed laid upon a soul 
unequal to the performance of it. In this view I 
find the piece composed throughout. Here is an 
oak tree planted in a costly vase, which should have 
received into its bosom only lovely flowers ; the 
roots spread out, the vase is shivered to pieces. 

"A beautiful, pure, and most moral nature, with- 
out the strength of nerve which makes the hero, 
sinks beneath a burden which it can neither bear 
nor throw off; every duty is holy to him — this too 
hard. The impossible is required of him — not the 
impossible in itself, but the impossible to him. 
How he winds, turns, agonizes, advances, and re- 
coils, ever reminded, ever reminding himself, and at 
last almost loses his purpose from his thoughts, with- 
out ever again recovering his peace of mind. . . . 

" It pleases, it flatters us greatly, to see a hero who 
acts of himself, who loves and hates us as his heart 
prompts, undertaking and executing, thrusting aside 
all hinderances, and accomplishing a great purpose. 
Historians and poets would fain persuade us that so 
proud a lot may fall to man. In " Hamlet " we are 
taught otherwise ; the hero has no plan, but the 
piece is full of plan. . . . 

" Hamlet is endowed more properly with sentiment 
than with a character ; it is events alone that push 



308 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

him on ; and accordingly the piece has somewhat 
the amphfication of a novel. But as it is Fate that 
draws the plan, as the piece proceeds from a deed 
of terror, and the hero is steadily driven on to a 
deed of terror, the work is tragic in its highest 
sense, and admits of no other than a tragic end." 

This interpretation leaves other aspects of Ham- 
let unexplained. This subjective condition must be 
supplemented by taking into account the objective 
world in which Hamlet found himself. Sensitive 
alike in intellect and in his moral nature, he was 
placed in a corrupt society, in which every relation 
was tainted. The thought of his mother, which 
ought to have been a spring of sweetness and 
strength, was unendurable. He was surrounded 
by false friends and paid spies. Upon him was laid 
the appalling task of reasserting moral order in a 
loathsome household and a demoralized kingdom ; 
and the only way open to him was by the perpetra- 
tion of a deed of vengeance from which his whole 
nature drew back in revolt. The tragic situation 
was created by the conflict against the State and 
the family to which he was committed by the know- 
ledge of his father's death, his uncle's crime, and his 
mother's lust, and the conflict within himself be- 
tween the duty of revenge and the horror of blood- 
shedding. If to these considerations is added the 
fact that he was an idealist, with a deep and irre- 
sistible tendency to the meditation and subtle specu- 
lation which feel in advance all the possible results 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 



309 



of action so keenly that the responsibility for acting 
becomes almost unbearable, the character of Ham- 
let becomes intelligible, if not entirely explicable. 

The weight of evidence shows, as has been sug- 
gested, that in the " war of the theatres " which 
raged at the end of the sixteenth and the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth century Shakespeare took 
no active part ; he was by nature free from the nar- 
rowness of partisanship, and there are indications 
that he was on friendly terms with men of all 
shades of literary opinion. In " Hamlet," however, 
he distinctly takes sides with the adult actors 
against the growing prominence of boys on the 
stage. The relation of boy choirs, and especially 
that of the Chapel Royal, to the theatre in Shake- 
speare's time was pointed out in an earlier chapter. 
These choirs were, in an informal way, training- 
schools for the stage at a time when all women's 
parts were taken by boys, and there was, in conse- 
quence, constant need of their services. About the 
time of the appearance of " Julius Caesar " there was 
a sharp rivalry between adult and boy actors, the 
public espousing warmly the performances of the 
boys. The development of this rivalry cannot be 
traced, but in 1601 the theatre-going public had 
become partisans of the boys and were deserting 
the theatres in which adults held the stage. This 
preference had become so pronounced that Shake- 
speare's company was driven into the provinces. In 
their travels the members of the company appeared 



3IO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

at Cambridge, and it was probably on this visit 
that the new play of " Hamlet " was presented. 
The popularity of the boys not only jeopardized 
the fortunes of the regular companies, but seriously 
impaired the quality of the performances. When 
the Children of the Chapel were able to secure for 
their own use the new theatre in Blackfriars, which 
Burbage had recently built, the Globe company 
began to feel the competition very keenly ; and, for 
a time, so marked was the popularity of the boys, 
their prospects and those of the art of acting were 
dark indeed. 

Shakespeare was at work on " Hamlet " in this 
crisis in his own fortunes and those of the theatre, 
and stated his position in the controversy with 
entire clearness. In answer to Hamlet's question 
why the tragedians travel when it was better both 
for reputation and profit that they should stay in 
the city, Rosencrantz replies that their retirement 
into the provinces has been caused by the " late 
innovation " : 

" Do they hold the same estimation they did when 
I was in the city ? Are they so followed ? 

" No, indeed, are they not. 

" How comes it ? [continues Hamlet] ; do they 
grow rusty } 

" Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace ; 
but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, 
that cry out on the top of the question, and are most 
tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the fash- 
ion, and so berattle the common stages — so they 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 



311 



call them — that many wearing rapiers are afraid of 
goose-quills and dare scarce come thither. 

" What, are they children ? who maintains 'em ? 
how are they escoted ? Will they pursue the 
quality no longer than they can sing ? will they not 
say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to 
common players — as is most like, if their means 
are no better — their writers do them wrong, to 
make them exclaim against their own succession ? 

" 'Faith, there has been much to do on both sides ; 
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to con- 
troversy ; there was, for a while, no money bid for 
argument, unless the poet and the player went to 
cuffs in the question, 

" Is't possible ? 

" O, there has been much throwing about of 
brains. 

" Do the boys carry it away ? 

" Ay, that they do, my lord ; Hercules and his 
load too." 

This conversation between Hamlet and Rosen- 
crantz is significant of the close touch with the 
realities of life which Shakespeare never lost for a 
moment, even when dealing with the greatest 
themes or creating works of pure imagination. 

To this period, in its final form, at least, belongs 
the play of "All's Well that Ends Well," to 
which Meres, in his " Palladis Tamia," probably 
refers when he includes among the plays ascribed 
to Shakespeare " Love's Labour's Won." It was 
probably sketched and perhaps fully written at a 
much earlier date than its final revision. The plot 
is derived from a group of stories in Boccaccio's 



312 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



..-.mffimWffSlBfSBm^ 



" Decameron," which narrate the fortunes of lovers 
who surmount obstacles and gain the rewards of 
love only after great or persistent effort; a phase 
of experience which is beyond doubt the keynote of 

the play. The 
story was 
translated by 
Paynter and 
appeared in 
English in 
" The Palace 
of Pleasure " 
in 1566 or 
1567. Shake- 
speare depart- 
ed widely from 
the story in its 
earlier form by 
the greater 
prominence 
given to the 
part of Hel- 
ena and the singular sweetness and devotion which 
irradiate her whole course. Colerida:e thous^ht her 
Shakespeare's loveliest creation. The portraiture of 
her character is touched throughout with exquisite 
delicacy and skill. Helena suffers, however, from 
the atmosphere of the play, which is distinctly 
repellent ; it is difficult to resist the feeling that, 
conceding all that the play demands in concentra- 




FRANCIS BACON, LORD VERULAM. 
From a print by I. Houbraken, 1738. 



THE EARLIER TRAGEDIES 31 3 

tion of interest upon the single end to be achieved, 
Helena cheapens the love she finally wins by a 
sacrifice greater than love could ask or could afford 
to receive. And when the sacrifice is made and 
the end secured, the victory of love is purely external ; 
there is no inward and deathless unity of passion 
between the lovers like that which united Post- 
humus and Imogen in life and Romeo and Juliet in 
death. 

The play must be interpreted broadly in the 
light of Shakespeare's entire work ; in this light it 
finds its place as the expression of a passing mood 
of deep and almost cynical distrust; it is full of that 
searching irony which from time to time finds 
utterance in the poet's work and was inevitable in 
a mind of such range of vision. It is well to 
remember, also, that in this play the poet, for the 
sake of throwing a single quality into the highest 
relief, secured entire concentration of attention by 
disregarding or ignoring other qualities and relations 
of equal importance and authority. This was what 
Browning did in his much misunderstood poem 
" The Statue and the Bust." It is always a perilous 
experiment, because it involves so miich intelligent 
cooperation on the part of the reader. It is a 
triumph of Shakespeare's art that Helena's purity 
not only survives the dangers to which she exposes 
it, but takes on a kind of saintly whiteness in the 
corruption in which she plays her perilous part. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE LATER TRAGEDIES 

Shakespeare was now in the depths of the deep 
stirring of his spirit which has left its record in 
the Tragedies. The darkest mood was on him, 
apparently, when " Hamlet " and the three succeed- 
ing plays were written, — the mood in which the 
sense of evil in the world almost overpowered his 
belief in the essential soundness of life, and the 
mystery of evil pressed upon the imagination with 
such intensity that he was tempted to take refuge 
in fundamental cynicism. It is in the plays of this 
period that Shakespeare gives place to the deep- 
going irony which pervaded the Greek drama, and 
which at times obscures the essential freedom and 
shaping power of personality. In his darkest mood, 
however, the sanity and largeness of the poet's 
mind asserted themselves and kept the balance 
against the temptation to narrow the vision by 
tingeing the world with the colour of a mood, or by 
substituting for clear, direct, dispassionate play of 
the mind on the facts of life the easy process of 
reading universal history in the light of personal 
experience. 

314 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 315 

How completely Shakespeare escaped a danger 
which would have been fatal to him is seen in the 
changes he wrought in the story which forms the 
basis of " Measure for Measure." This play, like 
"All's Well that Ends Well" and " Troilus and 
Cressida," is painful and repellent; it is tinged 
with an irony which has a corrosive quality ; it is 
touched with a bitterness of feeling which seems 
foreign to Shakespeare. The evil of life was evi- 
dently pressing upon his imagination so heavily 
that it had become a burden on his heart. In 
" Hamlet " he had portrayed a rotten society ; in 
" Measure for Measure " he depicted a state full 
of iniquity and a group of men corrupted by the 
very air they breathed ; in " Troilus and Cressida " 
the same vileness was personified in the most loath- 
some characters. 

In the great Tragedies we breathe an air which 
is charged with fate, and feel ourselves involved 
in vast calamities which we are powerless to con- 
trol ; in the plays which have been named we 
breathe an atmosphere which is fetid and impure, 
and human nature becomes unspeakably mean and 
repulsive. This is, perhaps, the effect of the terrible 
strain of the tragic mood on Shakespeare's spirit ; 
and these plays are to be accepted as expressions 
of a mood of depression verging upon despair. 
They are often classed with the Comedies, but 
they belong with the Tragedies, not only in temper, 
but in time. 



3l6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Even In this blackness of thick darkness the 
poet's sanity is never lost. In a dull play by 
George Whetstone, published in 1587, called " Pro- 
mos and Cassandra " and based on an Italian novel 
by Cinthio, who also worked it into a tragedy, 
Shakespeare found the plot of " Measure for Meas- 
ure " ; the story was told in prose by Whetstone 
four years later in a collection of tales which he 
called " Heptameron of Civil Discourses." In the 
title of the play the earlier dramatist affirmed that it 
showed in the first part " the unsufferable abuse of 
a lewd magistrate ; the virtuous behaviour of a chaste 
lady ; the uncontrolled lewdness of a favoured cour- 
tesan ; and the undeserved estimation of a perni- 
cious parasite." Shakespeare's modifications of the 
plot are highly significant : in the older versions 
Isabella surrenders her virtue as the price of her 
brother's life ; in " Measure for Measure " her im- 
pregnable purity gives the whole play a saving 
sweetness. To Shakespeare's imagination is due 
also the romantic episode of the moated grange 
and the pathetic figure of Mariana. In the murky 
atmosphere of this painful drama Isabella's stain- 
less and incorruptible chastity invests purity with 
a kind of radiancy, and she finds her place in the 
httle company of adorable women in whom Shake- 
speare's creative imagination realized and personi- 
fied the eternal feminine qualities. 

" Measure for Measure " was probably produced 
about 1603, and " Troilus and Cressida " belongs, 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 317 

in its final form, to the same year. The problems 
presented by the different versions are not more 
difficult than those presented by the play itself, 
which has been described as " a history in which 
historical verisimilitude is openly set at naught, 
a comedy without genuine laughter, a tragedy 
without pathos." The editors of the First Folio 
were so uncertain about its essential character that 
they evaded the necessity of classifying it by plac- 
inof it between the Histories and the Traq;edies. 
In temper, spirit, and probably in time, it belongs 
with the Tragedies, where it is now generally 
printed. It is the only play in which Shakespeare 
drew upon the greatest stream of ancient story 
and the materials for which he found in many 
forms in the literature of his time. Chief among 
these was Chaucer's noble rendering of the ancient 
romance, to which may be added Chapman's 
' Homer," Lydgate's " Troy Book," and probably 
Robert Greene's version of the story which ap- 
peared in 1587. 

In this play Shakespeare was dealing with mate- 
rial which had generally been regarded as heroic 
and which was rich in heroic qualities ; his treat- 
ment is, however, essentially satirical, with touches, 
of unmistakable cynicism. This attitude was not, 
however, entirely new to Shakespeare's auditors ; 
the great Homeric story had already been handled 
with a freedom which bordered on levity. Shake- 
speare shows little regard for the proprieties of 



3l8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

classical tradition ; this satirical attitude did not, 
however, blur his insight into the nature of the 
men whom he portrayed. 

The drama brings into clear light the irony of 
human fate ; but it is not a blind fate which the 
dramatist invokes as the shaping power in the 
drama ; it is a fate set in motion by the funda- 
mental qualities or defects of the chief actors. The 
special aspect of irony which the play presents is 
the confusion brought into private and public 
affairs by lawless or fatuous love. Thersites goes 
to the heart of the matter when, with brutal direct- 
ness, he characterizes the struggle as a " war for a 

placket." Helen, 

A pearl, 
Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships, 

involves Greece and Troy in measureless disaster, 
while Cressida's cheap duplicity makes Troilus the 
fool of fortune. 

This play, it will be remembered, has been 
regarded by some critics as a contribution to the 
" war of the theatres," and as containing direct 
references, not only to the' matters at issue, but 
to the characteristics and works of the chief com- 
batants. Mr. Fleay has made a thorough study 
of the play from this point of view, and has pre- 
sented his case with orreat acumen and skilful 
arrangement of facts and inferences. It is diffi- 
cult to find in the play, in its present form, 
adequate basis for the supposition that it was 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 319 

written as an attack on Jonson, or that one of 
Shakespeare's contemporaries is portrayed in Ther- 
sites. Shakespeare may have touched humorously 
on some of the extravagances of that bloodless but 
vociferous combat ; but the drama must have had 
a deeper root. Unsatisfactory and repellent as it 
is in some aspects, " Troilus and Cressida" has 
very great interest as a document in Shakespeare's 
history as a thinker and an artist. It is remark- 
able for its range of style, reproducing as it does 
his earlier manner side by side with his later 
manner. It is notable also for its knowledge of 
life, expressed in a great number of sententious 
and condensed phrases ; for its setting aside of 
the dramatic mask and direct statement of the 
truth which the dramatist means to convey. And 
it is supremely interesting because in the person 
of Ulysses, the real hero of the drama, Shake- 
speare seems to present his own view of life. 
The ripest wisdom of the dramatist speaks through 
the lips of this typical man of experience, whose 
insight has been corrected by the widest contact 
with affairs, whose long familiarity with the world 
has made him a master of its diseases, and whose 
speech has the touch of universality in its dis- 
passionateness, breadth, and clarity of vision. This 
tragedy of disillusion has at least the saving 
quality of a rich and many-sided knowledge of 
life. 

Queen Elizabeth died in March, 1603, while 



2,20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare was absorbed in the problems pre- 
sented in the Tragedies. His silence when the 
chorus of elegies filled the air has already been 
noted; his friendship for Southampton and Essex 
had probably estranged him from the Queen. 
Shortly after his accession to the throne, James I. 
•showed his favour to a group of nine actors, 




among whom were Shakespeare and Burbage, by 
granting them a special license of a very liberal 
character, and giving them the right to call them- 
selves the King's Servants. The plays of Shake- 
speare were repeatedly presented before the King 
at various places; among them, Wilton House, 
the residence of the Earl of Pembroke, which 
stands in a charming country about three miles 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 32 1 

from Salisbury, and in which Sidney wrote the 
"Arcadia." The whole region is touched with 
hterary associations of the most diverse kinds. 
The course of travel taken by Shakespeare's com- 
pany makes it probable that he saw the noble 
Cathedral in its beautiful close as Dickens saw it 
when he laid the scene of " Martin Chuzzlewit " 
in that neighbourhood, and that he passed the 
little church where holy George Herbert lived 
five years of his beautiful life a quarter of a cen- 
tury later. In the following year, wearing the 
scarlet robe presented for the occasion, Shake- 
speare, in company with other actors, walked in 
the procession which formally welcomed the King 
to London. Mr. Lee agrees with Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps in the belief that Shakespeare and his 
fellow-actors of the King's Company were present 
at Somerset House by royal order, and took part 
in the magnificent ceremonies with v/hich the 
Spanish ambassador, who came to England to 
ratify the treaty of peace between the two coun- 
tries, was entertained at midsummer in the same 
year. And during the succeeding autumn and 
winter the records show that Shakespeare's com- 
pany appeared before the King at Whitehall on 
at least eleven occasions. Much as the King 
loved the society of prelates and the amenities of 
theological discussion, it is clear that he was not 
indifferent to the charms of the stage. 

One of the plays which the King saw was 



322 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

" Othello." In " Hamlet " Shakespeare spoke for 
and to the Germanic consciousness ; in " Romeo 
and Juliet," and still more directly in "Othello," 
he spoke for and to the Latin consciousness. 
" Othello " is one of the simplest, most direct, 
conventional, and objective of the plays. In its 
main lines it is an old-fashioned drama of blood- 
shedding, saved by the penetrating insight with 
which the motives of the chief characters are 
revealed, and by the vitalizing skill with which 
the situations are related to the plot and the 
plot rooted in the moral necessities of the human 
nature within the circle of movement. The thread 
of the story was clearly traced by Cinthio in the 
series of novels from which " Measure for Meas- 
ure " was also derived. The Italian romancer 
furnished nearly all the incidents, but Shake- 
speare breathed the breath of dramatic life into 
them, made Othello and Desdemona the central 
figures, and developed the subtle deviltry of lago. 
It is Othello's open and generous nature which, 
like the idealism of Brutus, makes him the victim 
of men smaller than himself. Desdemona loves 
him for the dangers he has passed, and, like 
Helena, surrenders herself without question or 
hesitation to her passion. The audacity of her 
surrender is heightened by the difference of race 
between her and Othello — a difference so wide 
and deep that to cross it almost inevitably created 
a tragic situation. From the very beginning the 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 323 

play is touched with a certain violence of emotion 
and action which bears in itself the elements of 
disaster. lago, keeping himself in the background 
and striking blow after blow, is one of the most 
significant and original of Shakespeare's crea- 
tions — a malicious servant of a fate compounded 
of his devilish keenness of insight into the weak- 
nesses of noble natures and of their unsuspi- 
cious trustfulness. The basis of tragedy in Othello 
was his ready belief in lago and his quickly 
awakened distrust of Desdemona. In the end, 
lago, after the manner of those who invoke the 
tragic forces for their own evil ends, is destroyed 
by the tempest of passion he has let loose in the 
world. 

By reason of its simplicity, its rapidity of move- 
ment, and its dramatic interest, " Othello " has long 
been one of the popular Shakespearian plays on the 
stage. Its chief characteristic is perhaps its pathos ; 
the deep and penetrating appeal which the spectacle 
of the defeat of two noble natures by pure villany 
makes to the imagination. Wordsworth declared 
that " the tragedy of Othello, Plato's records of the 
last scenes in the career of Socrates, and Izaak 
Walton's ' Life of George Herbert ' are the most 
pathetic of human compositions." 

Shakespeare was now swiftly mounting to the 
sublimest heights of dramatic creation, penetrating 
farther and farther into the depths of the human 
spirit, and steadily bringing the tragic movement 



324 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



home to the soul of the tragic hero. In " Romeo 
and Juliet" the family and social forces are more 
powerful than the passion and devotion of the ill- 
fated lovers; in "Julius Caesar" the interest fast- 
ens upon Brutus, while the dead Imperator remains 
in the background as the personification of a new 






^^^^r:z;^.it*^ '"--O.^^ 



J) 




OLD CLOPTON BRIDGE. 



order in society ; in " Hamlet " the time, which was 
out of joint, must be taken into account if the chief 
actor is to be made comprehensible. In " Othello " 
the essential movement is wholly within the circle 
of the character of the protagonist ; the tragic action 
springs out of Othello's nature; the drama issues 
out of the heart of the hero and is centred in him. 
This marks the culmination of Shakespeare's art 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 325 

as a dramatist; every element in the play — char- 
acter, action, incident, background — is strictly sub- 
ordinated to the unity and totality of the movement, 
and the concentrated energy and vitality of the 
dramatist's genius bear the drama swiftly forward to 
the dramatic crisis. 

In " Macbeth," which takes rank with " Hamlet," 
" Lear," and " Othello " as the dramatic masterpieces 
of Shakespeare, the same breadth and unity of in- 
terest are notable. It is one of the shortest of the 
plays ; there is almost no relief from humour or a 
subsidiary plot; the style is broad and firm, almost 
sketchy in the largeness of outline and the indiffer- 
ence to detail. The brevity and condensation of the 
play have raised the question whether it is not an 
abridgment. There is no question, however, regard- 
ing the definiteness and completeness of impression 
which it conveys — an impression of massive and 
inevitable tragedy. The sources of " Macbeth " are 
to be found in Holinshed's " Chronicle of England 
and Scotland"; suggestions for the witch scenes 
may have been found in Scot's " Discoverie of 
Witchcraft" which appeared not long before the 
poet left Stratford. The play was completed about 
1606, and the Scottish background suggests that 
the interest of the King in the scenic and historic 
associations of the drama may have directed Shake- 
speare's attention to the subject. 

" Macbeth " presented the poet with a new motive 
or theme of dramatic interest. Up to this point the 



326 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tragic heroes had committed deeds of violence, but 
Lear spoke for them all when he said : 

I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning. 

Macbeth does not belong in this company of the 
children of fate ; he deliberately sets in motion the 
tragic forces which sweep the stage ; he becomes a 
criminal on a colossal scale ; he kills his king under 
his own roof, uses murder as if it were a legitimate 
political method, and converts all the opportunities 
of usurpation into a consistent practice of tyranny. 
He fills the stage ; the whole drama is rooted in his 
nature; and, criminal as he is, he commands unwill- 
ing admiration and breathless interest by the mas- 
sive simplicity of his character, the concentration of 
his purpose, and the directness of his action. The 
play moves with unusual rapidity, and presents no 
elements which withdraw the attention for a mo- 
ment from the central figures or the swift and defi- 
nite movement. 

The weird sisters on the blasted heath had long 
been part of the Macbeth legend. In Shakespeare's 
version of the story these supernatural beings were 
neither the creations of Macbeth's brain nor the 
masters of his destiny; they had objective reality, 
but they were not the ministers of fate. Macbeth's 
fate was in his own hands. The sisters spoke to 
Banquo as directly as to Macbeth, but Banquo's 
clear vision and deep integrity gave their word no 
lodgement. Whether they speak truth or falsehood. 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 327 

they leave his fate untouched ; in Macbeth's mind, 
on the other hand, they find a quick soil for evil 
suggestion. 

It has been urged by several critics that some 
parts of " Macbeth " were interpolated at a later day 
by Thomas Middleton, chiefly on the ground that 
these passages are un-Shakespearian in character, 
that there are obvious resemblances between the 
witch scenes in the play and Middleton's play 
" The Witch," which appeared in 16 10, and that two 
songs to which allusion is made in the stage-direc- 
tions of " Macbeth " appear in " The Witch." Charles 
Lamb long ago pointed out the marked differences 
between the witches of Shakespeare and those of 
Middleton ; the resemblances between the plays are 
most readily explained by the assumption that 
Middleton had Shakespeare too much in his mind. 
The two songs beginning " Come away, come away," 
and "Black spirits and white," may have been 
written by Middleton and interpolated in the acting 
version of " Macbeth " at a later date, or they may 
have been written by Shakespeare and revised or 
modified by Middleton. The scene in which the 
porter speaks after the murder was long regarded 
as questionable. Coleridge found the introduction 
of the comic element too abrupt, and failed to per- 
ceive the deepening of the tragic impression which 
the scene produces by its startling contrast with the 
awful atmosphere of crime which pervades the castle. 
This point was finally settled by the keen instinct 



328 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of De Quincey, in one of the most famous passages 
in Shakespearian criticism : 

" Another world has stept in ; and the murderers 
are taken out of the region of human things, human 
purposes, human desires. They are transfigured : 
Lady Macbeth is ' unsexed ' ; Macbeth has forgot 
that he was born of a woman ; both are conformed 
to the image of devils ; and the world of devils is 
suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed 
and made palpable ? In order that a new world 
may step in, this world must for a time disappear. 
The murderers and the murder must be insulated 
— cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordi- 
nary tide and succession of human affairs — locked 
up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must 
be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is 
suddenly arrested, laid asleep, tranced, racked into 
a dread armistice ; time must be annihilated, relation 
to things abolished ; and all must pass self-withdrawn 
into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly pas- 
sion. Hence it is that, when the deed is done, 
when the work of darkness is perfect, then the 
world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in 
the clouds ; the knocking at the gate is heard ; and 
it makes known audibly that the reaction has com- 
menced ; the human has made its reflux upon the 
fiendish ; the pulses of life are beginning to beat 
again; "and the reestablishment of the goings-on 
of the world in which we live first makes us pro- 
foundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had 
suspended them." 

Dr. Simon Forman has left an account of a per- 
formance of " Macbeth " which he saw at the Globe 
Theatre in the spring of 161 1. The play finds its 
place in the front rank of tragedies ancient or mod- 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 



329 



ern; and its massive structure, its boldness of con- 
ception, the largeness of its outlines, have inclined 
some critics to give it the first place. It is pervaded 
by an atmosphere of tragedy, but it is free from the 
irony of blind fate. Macbeth is not the victim of 
a fate which is imposed upon him from without ; 
he invokes the fate which pursues him, and " life 
becomes a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and 
fury, signifying nothing," because he has violated 
its laws and wilfully evoked its possibilities of 
disaster. 

In " Macbeth " the epic element mingled with 
the dramatic; in " King Lear" the tragic element 
is supreme and unmixed, and the tragic art of 
Shakespeare touches its sublimest height. There 
is no more tragic figure in literature than that of 
the old king, accustomed to rule and flung out into 
the night by the children among whom he has 
divided his power; intensely affectionate and wil- 
fully irrational ; with all the majesty of a king 
joined to the passionateness of a child ; his illu- 
sions destroyed, his reason unseated ; with no 
companionship save that of the fool, wandering 
shelterless in the storm, symbolical of the shatter- 
ing of his life in the awful tempest of passion. 

This Titanic drama, which ranks with the sub- 
limest work of yEschylus and Sophocles and stands 
alone in modern literature, was performed before 
the King at Whitehall, at Christmas-tide, 1606. 
The story, in a condensed form, is found in Geoffrey 



330 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



of Monmouth's " Historia Britonum," and was de- 
rived from an old Welsh chronicle ; some of the 
motives introduced into the legend appear in a 
wide range of folk tales. Like " Hamlet," the 
formative conception in " King Lear" has its foun- 




THE HALL AT CLOPTON. 



dations deep in the vital experience of the race. It 
is Celtic in its origin ; but it found its setting in 
literature at the hands of the old English chroniclers, 
Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert of Brunne, 
and, finally, of Holinshed, in whose pages Shake- 
speare read it. The story of Cordelia was told in verse 
in " The Mirrour for Magistrates " and in " The Faerie 
Queene," and had been dramatized at least fifteen 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 



331 



years before Shakespeare dealt with it. The poet's 
attention may have been definitely drawn to the 
dramatic possibilities of this old story by a rude 
play which appeared in 1605, entitled "The True 
Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three 
Daughters — Gondrill, Ragan, and Cordelia " ; a 
version which, in the opinion of Dr. Ward, seemed 
only to await the touch of such a hand as Shake- 
speare's to become " a tragedy of sublime effective- 
ness." This was precisely what Shakespeare, by 
omitting irrelevant parts, by a free use of all the 
material, and by entirely reorganizing it, made of 
the old folk story. 

Appalling as is the presentation of the play of 
elemental forces and passions in " King Lear," and 
completely as it seems to break away from all 
relation to a spiritual order, and to exhibit men as 
the sport of fate, it is, nevertheless, rooted in the 
character of the men and women who are tossed 
about in its vast movements as by some shoreless 
sea. Gloucester, the putting out of whose eyes 
perhaps surpasses in horror any other incident in 
the plays, is not so blind that he cannot read the 
story of his own calamities in the sin of his youth. 
We are reminded of this relation between present 
misery and far-off offences when Edgar says : 

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us ; 
The dark and vicious place where thee he got 
Cost him his eyes. 



332 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



The play is Titanic not only in force and gran- 
deur, but in the elemental character of the passions 
and ideas which contribute to the catastrophe. 
Such a nature as Lear's — passionate, wilful, un- 
disciplined, dominated by a colossal egoism — could 
not escape a conflict of appalling dimensions. When 
the world which Lear had organized about him by 
the supremacy of his own will was shattered, he 
could neither recognize nor accept a new order, but 
must fling himself in a blind passion of revolt against 
the new conditions which he had unwittingly brought 
into being. His madness grew out of his irrational 
attitude towards his family. 

Lear's sufferings are heightened by interweaving 
with them the sufferings of Gloucester. " Were 
Lear alone to suffer from his daughters," wrote 
Schlegel, " the impression would be limited to the 
powerful compassion felt by us for his private mis- 
fortunes. But two such unheard-of examples taking 
place at the same time have the appearance of a 
great commotion in the moral world ; the picture 
becomes gigantic, and fills us with such alarm as 
we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly 
bodies might one day fall from their appointed 
orbits." To still further deepen this impression, 
the Fool, the very soul of pathos in humorous dis- 
guise, strikes into clear light not only the King's 
misfortunes, but his faults as well. 

In " King Lear," as clearly as in the other trage- 
dies, men reap what they sow, and the deed returns 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 333 

to the doer with inexorable retribution; but the play 
is not to be explained by any easy and obvious 
application of ethical principles. It lifts the curtain 
upon the most appalling facts of life, and makes no 
attempt to rationalize them. In this revelation of 
the ultimate order of life, which is inexplicable by 
the mind in its present stage of development, the 
play takes its place with the Book of Job, with the 
great trilogy of ^schylus, or with the sublime 
" CEdipus Tyrannus," of which Shelley thought it 
the modern equivalent. Its sublimity lies in the 
vastness of its presentation of the great theme of 
human suffering, and in the nobility of its method. 
Such a theme could have been touched only by a j 
man of the first magnitude ; and such a man could 
not go beyond its dramatic presentation ; to have 
attempted the solution would have cheapened the 
work. The end of art is not to solve the problems 
of existence, but to deepen and freshen the sense of 
life ; when this sense is deep and fresh, these prob- 
lems are so dealt with that, as in the Book of Job, 
their very vastness and mystery suggest the only 
adequate and satisfying answer. In " King Lear," the 
greatest dramatic achievement of our race, the poet 
so enlarges the field of observation and dilates the 
imagination of the reader that the postponement of 
the ultimate solution of the problem of the tragedy 
is not only inevitable, but is the only outcome 
which would be tolerated by the reader. 

In " Timon of Athens," which probably followed 



334 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



close upon " King Lear" in point of time, the poet 
turned once more from the lofty severity of tragedy, 
full of pity and of terror, to the easier, narrower, 
and less noble attitude of the satirist, in whose com- 
ment there is a touch of corrosive bitterness. In 
style, in treatment, and in attitude this play is so 
full of inconsistencies and, in parts, so essentially 
un-Shakespearian, that it is now generally regarded 
as a sketch made by the poet, but elaborated and 
put into its present form by other and later hands. 
This conclusion seems more probable than the 
hypothesis that it is an old drama worked over by 
Shakespeare, or that it was the product of collabo- 
ration with another playwright. It is not certain 
that any play on the subject was known to Shake- 
speare, who found the story of Timon in Plutarch's 
" Life of Antonius," and also in the version of the 
story in that repository of old stories, Paynter's 
*' Palace of Pleasure." It seems probable that the 
author of the play was familiar with Lucian's dia- 
logue on Timon. 

The character of Timon relates itself in various 
ways to that of Lear. Both confided blindly; both 
were generous without measure or reason ; there 
was in both an element of irrationality ; and in 
both the reaction was excessive and akin to mad- 
ness. There were in both the elements of simple 
and kindly goodness ; and both were lacking in 
perception and penetration. In both the seeds of 
tragic calamity lay very near the surface. The 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 335 

irony of Timon lies not so much in the reaction of 
his irrational prodigality upon his fortunes and 
character as in the fierce light thrown upon those 
who had benefited by his lavish mood. Timon 
hates mankind upon a very narrow basis of per- 
sonal experience ; Apemantus hates mankind be- 
cause he is a cynic by nature. Timon is blind 
alike to the good and the evil in mankind ; he fails 
to recognize the loyal devotion of his steward Fla- 
vins, after misfortunes have overtaken him, as he 
failed to heed his warnings in the days of prodigal- 
ity. In this blindness his calamities are rooted ; it 
is this which turns all the sweetness of his nature 
into acid when the world forsakes him ; and it is 
this which makes his judgment of that world value- 
less save as an expression of his own mood. " Ti- 
mon" is a study of temperament, not a judgment 
upon life. 

There could hardly have been a greater contrast 
of subject and material than that which Shake- 
speare found when he turned from " King Lear " or 
" Timon " to " Antony and Cleopatra " ; a tragedy 
almost incredibly rich in variety and range of char- 
acter and in splendour of setting. He had recourse 
again to Plutarch's " Life of Antonius," fastening 
this time not upon an episode, but upon the nature 
and fate of one of the most fascinating figures on 
the stage of the antique world. That world he 
re-created in its strength and weakness, in its luxury 
and magnificence, in a drama which brought before 



336 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the imagination with equal firmness of touch the 
power of Rome, personified in the discipHned and 
far-seeing Octavius, the voluptuous temperament of 
the East in Cleopatra, and the tragic collision of 
two great opposing conceptions of life in Mark 
Antony — a man born with the Roman capacity for 
action and the Eastern passion for pleasure. In 
Cesar's house in Rome, in newly contracted alli- 
ance with Octavius, Antony's heart is in Egypt: 

r the East my pleasure lies. 

The style marks the transition to the poet's latest 
manner ; rhyme almost disappears, and " weak end- 
ings," or the use of weak monosyllables at the end 
of the lines, become very numerous. The poet had 
secured such conscious mastery of his art that he 
trusted entirely to his instinct and taste. The 
story in Plutarch's hands has a noble breadth and 
beauty, and is full of insight into the ethical rela- 
tions of the chief actors in this world-drama. The 
full splendour of Shakespeare's genius has hardly 
done more than bring out dramatically the signifi- 
cance of these great words of the Greek biogra- 
pher: 

"Antonius being thus inclined, the last and ex- 
tremest mischief of all other (to wit, the love of 
Cleopatra) lighted on him, who did waken and stir 
up many vices yet hidden in him, and were never 
seen to any ; and if any spark of goodness or hope 
of rising were left him, Cleopatra quenched it straight 
and made it worse than before." 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 



337 



1^'^ 



Again and again Shakespeare touched upon this 
great theme and showed how tragic disaster issues 
out of unregulated passion and infects the coolest 
nature with madness ; but nowhere else is that 
tragedy set on so great a stage and so magnificently 
enriched with 
splendid gifts 
of nature, 
noble posses- 
sions, and al- 
most limitless 
opportunities 
of achieve- 
ment. 

It is the 
drama of the 
East and West 
in mortal col- 
lision of ideals 
and motives, 
and the East 
succumbs to 







.M \G\' I- BKtiAWn ilMXcn 

WNO M (1 I \ \ 



the superior fibre and more highly organized char- 
acter of the West. Cleopatra is the greatest of the 
enchantresses. She has wit, grace, humour ; the 
intoxication. of sex breathes from her; she unites 
the passion of a great temperament with the fathom- 
less coquetry of a courtesan of genius. She is pas- 
sionately alive, avid of sensation, consumed with 
love of pleasure, imperious in her demands for that 



338 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

absolute homage which slays honour and saps man- 
hood at the very springs of its power. This superb 
embodiment of femininity, untouched by pity and 
untroubled by conscience, has a compelling charm, 
born in the mystery of passion and taking on the 
radiance of a thousand moods which melt into one 
another in endless succession, as if there were no 
limit to the resources of her temperament and the 
sorceries of her beauty. Of her alone has the 
greatest of poets dared to declare that " age can- 
not wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." 
It is this magnificence which invests Cleopatra's 
criminality with a kind of sublimity, so vast is the 
scale of her being and so tremendous the force of 
her passions. 

The depth of Shakespeare's poetic art and the 
power of his imagination are displayed in their full 
compass in " Antony and Cleopatra." The play is 
vitalized as by fire, so radiant is it in energy and 
beauty of expression. Not only are the chief 
figures realized with historical fidelity, but they 
breathe the very atmosphere of the East. 

In " Julius Cssar " there is Roman massiveness 
of construction and severity of outline ; " Antony 
and Cleopatra " is steeped in the languor and lux- 
ury of the East. The Roman play has the definite- 
ness and solidity of sculpture ; the Egyptian play 
has the glow and radiancy of painting. 

The study of classical subjects bore final fruit at 
the end of this period in Shakespeare's life as an 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 339 

artist in " Coriolanus," the tragedy of a great na- 
ture wrecked by pride. Written about 1609, and 
closely related to the magnificent drama of the East 
and West, the poet turned for the last time to the 
pages of Plutarch, who told this story, as he told 
the story of Antony, with a noble dignity and beauty 
which were not lost at the hands of the English 
translator. The motive of the play is so admirably 
set forth in a few phrases in the " Life of Corio- 
lanus " that it is impossible to avoid quoting them : 

" He was a man too full of passion and choler, and 
too much given over to self-will and opinion, as one 
of a high mind and great courage, that lacked the 
gravity and affability that is gotten with judgment 
of learning and reason, which only is to be looked 
for in a governor of State ; and that remembered 
not how wilfulness is the thing of the world, which 
a governor of a commonwealth, for pleasing, should 
shun, being that which Plato called ' solitariness ' ; 
as, in the end, all men that are wilfully given to a 
self opinion and obstinate mind, and who will never 
yield to other's reason but to their own, remain with- 
out company and forsaken of all men. For a man 
that will live in the world must needs have patience, 
which lusty bloods make but a mock at. So Mar- 
cius, being a stout man of nature, that never yielded 
in any respect, as one thinking that to overcome 
always and to have the upper hand in all matters, 
was a token of magnanimity and of no base and 
faint courage, which spitteth out anger from the 
most weak and passioned part of the beast, much 
like the matter of an impostume : went home to his 
house, full freighted with spite and malice against 
the people." 



340 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The humorous scenes which give the play vari- 
ety were entirely contributed by Shakespeare ; and 
the presentation of the mob is highly characteristic. 
The poet hated the irrationality and violence of 
untrained men. Coriolanus never for a moment 
conceals his contempt for them : 

I heard him swear, 
Were he to stand for consul, never would he 
Appear i' the market-place, nor on him put 
The napless vesture of humility ; 
Nor, showing (as the manner is) his wounds 
To the people, beg their stinking breaths. 

This is quite in accord with Casca's contempt for 
the " rabblement " which " hooted, and clapped their 
chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night- 
caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath," 
because Caesar refused the crown. This contempt 
finds its most satiric expression in Jack Cade's 
manifesto : 

" Be brave then ; for your captain is brave, and 
vows reformation. There shall be, in England, 
seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three- 
hooped pot shall have ten hoops ; and I will make 
it felony to drink small beer; all the realm shall be 
in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go 
to grass." 

In complete contrast with this conception of the 
common people as a mere rabble, full of passion and 
devoid of ideas, stands Coriolanus — a typical aris- 
tocrat, with the virtues of the aristocrat: courage, 
indifference to pain, scorn of money, independence 



THE LATER TRAGEDIES 341 

of thought, command of eloquence, and natural apti- 
tude for leadership. These great qualities are neu- 
tralized by colossal egotism, manifesting itself in a 
pride so irrational and insistent that, sooner or later, 
by the necessity of its nature, it must produce the 
tragic conflict. Coriolanus, in spite of his great 
faults, has heroic proportions, and fills the play with 
the sense of his superiority ; he lives and dies like a 
true tragic hero. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 

Mr. Denton Snider, who has interpreted Shake- 
speare with breadth of view and keenness of insight, 
and has brought out with convincing clearness the 
poet's conception of life and art from the institu- 
tional point of view, describes the Shakespearian 
drama as " the grand Mystery Play of humanity." 
The essence of the mystery play was the disclosure 
of a divine power at work in the world dealing 
directly with human affairs ; the interior union of 
the seen with the unseen, of the temporal with the 
eternal, of the human with the divine, was set out 
in childlike simplicity in these dramas of medieval 
faith and genius. In Shakespeare this disclosure 
of an invisible background against which human life 
is set and from the order of which it cannot escape 
without setting tragic forces in motion, took on a 
new and deeper form in the Tragedies which came 
from his hand in uninterrupted succession after 
1601. In these dramas all the elements of power 
and art which were present in germ in the Mystery, 
the Morality, and the Interlude were unfolded and 
harmonized in the spirit of freedom and with the 

342 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 343 

feeling for beauty which were the gifts of the 
Renaissance to the greatest of its children. 

Shakespeare was preeminently a poet, and it is 
highly improbable, therefore, that he thought out 
in advance the philosophical bearings of his art and 
worked out for 
himself a sys- 
tematized con- 
ception of life. 
Even Goethe, 
whose insight 
into the princi- 
ples of art pro- 
ductivity was as 
clear and final 
as his creative 
genius was di- 
rect and spon- 
taneous, was 
primarily a poet 
and secondarily 

a rritir or nhi- henry, prince of wales, son of james i. 

losopher. There is every reason to believe that 
Shakespeare's view of life came to him through the 
gradual disclosure of an experience which was 
rationalized and interpreted by habitual meditation. 
A nature of such sensitiveness and receptivity as 
his would feel the beauty of the world and the 
variety, the interest, and the humour of life as he 
felt these things in the years when he was serving 




344 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



his apprenticeship and, a Httle later, writing the 
Comedies. Such a nature, constantly fed by that 
vital sympathy with men which is part of the gift of 
genius, steadily deepened and clarified by experience 
and illumined by the insight of genius, would 
inevitably pass through the show of things to the 
moral order behind them, and discern more and 
more clearly the significance of character in the 
fortunes and fates of men, as Shakespeare did in the 
period of the historical and purely poetic dramas. 

If at this stage a deep and searching crisis were to 
occur in his spiritual life, misfortune overtake the 
men whom he loved and who personified for him 
the spirit and genius of his time, and that time, so 
splendid in its earlier promise and performance, be- 
come overclouded like a day fast hastening to night, 
his vision would insensibly widen and deepen, as 
did Shakespeare's when he entered upon the period 
of the Tragedies. Through all the earlier years in 
London he was steadily approaching the mystery 
of life ; in the years of the Tragedies he entered 
into that mystery and was enfolded by it. He 
wrote the Tragedies as he had written the Come- 
dies, because the creative impulse was on him and 
play-writing was his vocation ; but the order of the 
world which comes to light in them, giving sig- 
nificance to human striving and suffering, was not 
less clearly seen nor less authoritatively revealed 
because Shakespeare did not definitely set it before 
him as the object of his artistic endeavour. The 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 345 

poet is a more impressive witness to the ethical 
order of life than the moralist, because his discovery 
of that order is, in a sense, incidental and uninten- 
tional ; he sees it, not because he set out to discover 
it, but because it is there and he cannot avoid 
seeing it. 

That Shakespeare deliberately, and in a spirit of 
philosophic detachment from life, studied, after the 
manner of a psychologist, the phenomena of expe- 
rience, and formulated a system of interpreting 
those phenomena, is incredible in the exact degree 
in which one comprehends his nature ; that he was 
blind to this great order, that he did not discern 
what he saw nor understand what he said, that his 
mind was simply a mirror in which was caught up 
the reflection of a world which he never realized in 
consciousness, is still more incredible. When he 
laid aside the dramatic mask, as he did at times in 
the Sonnets and more than once in the plays, and 
notably in " Troilus and Cressida," he made it plain 
that he understood the significance of his own 
thought, and that his attitude toward the great 
matters with which he deals was intellio^ent and 
deliberate, if not at all moments self-conscious. 

It was his rare good fortune as an artist to pluck 
the fruits of the most searching scrutiny of the 
facts of life without losing that free and captivating 
spontaneity which is the joy of art; to command 
the knowledge of the psychologist without losing 
the magic of the poet ; to be at the same time one 



346 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the most penetrating of thinkers and the most 
beguiling of poets, with a clear vision of the deepest 
realities of existence and a voice full of the careless, 
rapturous melody of birds under the free sky. 

In the period of the Tragedies Shakespeare set 
forth with perfect clearness his view of man's place 
and meaning in the world. His whole conception 
of the authority and significance of human nature 
rests on personality — the master word of the 
thought of the Western world and the source of its 
formative ideas of freedom, responsibility, beauty, 
democracy, the reality of experience, the dignity of 
individual effort, and personal immortality. In the 
Tragedies Shakespeare worked out in dramatic 
form this central conception about which Western 
thought, since Plato, has organized itself. He 
exhibits the individual man as shaping his destiny 
largely by his own will ; as fashioning himself 
chiefly through action, by means of which ideas 
and emotions are transmuted into character and 
re-form the man. The problem of life, as it is pre- 
sented in the Shakespearian dramas, is to bring the 
individual will into harmony with the institutional 
life of society, organized in the family, the Church, 
and the State ; and to bring these institutions into 
harmony with the immutable principles of righteous- 
ness. This result is brought about in the Trage- 
dies by the collision of the individual with the 
established order, either to his own hurt or to the 
betterment of the order itself ; and the moment of 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 347 

collision is the moment of tragedy. It is at this 
moment, when the inner subjective force of the 
man sweeps into light through action, becomes 
objective and begins to affect others, to set in 
motion reactions upon himself and to change the 
order of things about him, that Shakespeare fastens 
attention upon the tragic character; and, through 
the collision between his will and the order of 
society or of life, reveals as by a lightning flash 
the soul of the man and the visible or invisible 
order in which his life is set. 

As clearly as does Dante, though in a very dif- 
ferent fashion, he shows the inevitable reaction of 
the deed upon the doer, and so strikes into sudden 
light the massive and all-embracing moral order of 
life. He swept away the last lingering shadows 
of the pagan conception of fate by showing that 
character is destiny, and that " character is the only 
definition we have of freedom and power." 

In the word character — the organization of 
impulse, emotion, will, and deed into a permanent, 
self-conscious personality, which becomes a shaping 
force in the world — is to be found the key to 
Shakespeare's conception of life and of the function 
of dramatic art. If he made plays which were suited 
to the taste of his age and were skilfully adapted to 
the limitations and possibilities of the stage in his 
day, he also made dramas which disclosed the most 
searching study of human experience, and the most 
adequate and ultimate interpretation and represen- 



348 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tation of that experience in the forms of art. He 
was at once a trained and practical playwright, with 
a first-hand knowledge of his business and of his 
constituency ; and he was also a thinker and an 
artist of the first order ; and there was no contra- 
diction between the man of skill and the man of 
genius in the same personality. The difficulty in 
understanding and accepting the many-sidedness of 
Shakespeare and the happy balance of spontaneity 
and reflection in him has its roots, not in the 
limited potentialities of the human spirit, but in 
the lack of imagination on the part of his readers. 
The miracle of genius — that magical insight which 
is apparently independent of character in its origin, 
but largely dependent on character for harmonious 
and adequate expression ; which never originates 
in any kind of education, but is largely conditioned 
upon education for its free and full development — 
is incredible to those who strive to reduce life and 
its arts to a set of formulce, and to divide men 
arbitrarily into types which are consistent through- 
out. Shakespeare is not to be explained by a 
formula nor to be studied as a type of mind formed 
by a rigid method ; he was neither an irresponsible 
genius, to whom great thoughts, unerring insights, 
and moments of inspired speech came without 
sequence or relation to his inner life, nor was he 
a systematically trained, intensely self-conscious 
workman, whose happiest strokes were planned 
with the nicest sense of craftsmanship, and whose 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 349 I 

consistent and coherent view of life was thoroughly- 
thought out before the first studies were put on j 
paper. 

He was primarily and always a poet ; it was as a 
poet that he first won recognition, and it was in 
the poetic temper and view of things that he found 
refuge and peace after the period of the Tragedies 
was passed ; and during the years when the dra- 
matic instinct and impulse dominated him and 
shaped his work, his methods, his spirit, and his 
relations to his vocation were those of a poet. As a 
poet he saw with the clearness of direct vision and felt 
with the freshness and power of spontaneous emo- 
tion, and he instinctively passed behind the fact to 
the truth which it suggested or illustrated ; but this 
spontaneous action of his nature was broadened, 
deepened, and brightened by quick and sensitive 
perception of the value and uses of methods, tools, 
and instruments of every kind, and by habitual 
meditation on the spectacle of life as it lay in his 
imagination. It is impossible to separate the poetic 
and the philosophic in his nature, to mark the 
points at which the process of observation ends 
and the free play of the imagination begins ; to 
sever that which was acquired from that which was 
creative in him ; to divide the conscious from the 
unconscious elements in his power and his life ; 
to distinguish between the thinker and the poet in 
his work. His work reveals with the utmost clear- 
ness a coherent and profound view of life, consist- 



350 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ently set forth in a long series of dramas ; every 
page bears the unmistakable stamp of the thinker ; 
but the mind behind this varied and splendid work 
is the mind of a poet, and the personality which 
shapes all this material into forms of beauty is that 
of the artist. When this point of view is taken, 
Shakespeare's genius does not cease to be marvel- 
lous, but it does cease to be incredible. 

The fate of the critic who attempts to slip the 
net of logical definition over this elusive spirit was 
charmingly portrayed by Heine in a passage which 
students of the dramatist will do well to keep in 
mind: 

" I fell asleep and dreamed," writes Heine — 
" dreamed that it was a starry night, and I swam 
in a small boat in a wide, wide sea, where all kinds 
of barks filled wdth masks, musicians, and torches 
gleaming, music sounding, many near or afar, rowed 
on. There were costumes of all countries and 
ages, old Greek tunics, mediaeval knightly coats. 
Oriental turbans, shepherds' hats with fluttering 
ribbons, masks of beasts wild or tame — now and 
then I thought I saw a well-known face, sometimes 
I heard familiar greetings — but all passed quickly 
by and far away, and the merry music grew softer 
and fainter, when, instead of the gay fiddling, I 
heard near me the mysterious, melancholy tones 
of hunters' horns from another part. Sometimes 
the night wind bore the strains of both to my ear, 
and then the mingled melody made a happy har- 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 35 1 

mon)'. The water echoed ineffably sweet sounds 
and burned as with a magical reflection of the 
torches, and the gayly-pennoned pleasure boats with 
their wondrous masquerades swam in light and 
music. A lovely woman, who stood by the rudder 
of one of the barks, cried to me in passing, ' Is it 
not true, friend, thou wouldst have a definition of 
the Shakespearian comedy ? ' I know not whether 
I answered ' Yes,' but in that instant the beautiful 
woman dipped her hand in the water and sprinkled 
the ringing sparks in my face, so that there was a 
general laughter, and I awoke." 

Many students and critics who have forgotten 
that Shakespeare is first and always a poet, and 
have approached him as if he were primarily a 
philosopher, have shared Heine's disaster without 
the consolation of Heine's vision. 

In the Tragedies Shakespeare touched the 
highest point of his power and his art ; more 
adequately than the Histories, Comedies, or 
Romances they give that impression of final author- 
ity which issues only from the greatest work of the 
greatest minds, and which has its roots in the per- 
ception that in these masterpieces the study of 
character is most searching and its portraiture most 
convincing. If the view of life and art which lies 
at the heart of the thought and action of the 
Western races is sound, Shakespeare becomes, in 
these great plays, their foremost interpreter. It is 
in these dramas that the function of action is 



352 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



revealed in a full, clear, adequate way almost for the 
first time in literature, and the process of historic 
development is set forth not as an intellectual but 
as a vital evolution. The problem of existence is 
not to be solved by the action of the mind alone ; 
men deal with life primarily not as thinkers but as 
men, with all the resources of a complex nature ; 
with instincts, appetites, passions ; with emotion, 
thought, and will. By means of action, impulse 
and thought pass out of the region of pure subjec- 
tivity into the world of actuality and become 
definite, concrete, potential ; through action, they 
react on the actor and reform or transform existing 
conditions and institutions. They create a human 
world against the background of the natural world ; 
they exhibit the human spirit in this world by giv- 
ing external form to its inward and hidden nature ; 
men cease to be mere observers and reflectors ; 
they become creative, and through action they enter 
into history and shape its movement. This action 
may not always justify itself in its positive results, 
but it always reveals man to himself and to his 
fellows ; it evokes his power, liberates him from the 
limitations of his own experience by setting him in 
a universal order ; develops his personality ; gives, 
in a word, free play to the human spirit, makes it 
conscious of its place in the order of life, and pro- 
vides an educational process which makes life 
intelligible, gives it moral significance, dramatic 
interest, and invests it with immortal hopes. In 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 353 



these dramas the ultimate truths of Hfe and the 
deepest secrets of experience are organized into 
forms of the highest beauty, and a great light 
suddenly shines in the heart 
of man; for all true art is the 
illumination of experience. 

The vital quality of Shake- 
speare's work, its living force, 
its convincing reality, are 
rooted in the closeness of its 
relation to experience, in the 
directness with which life fed 
the springs of his nature and 
the sources of his art. The 
conception of life, as revealed 
in the vast range of human 
action reacting on character, 
not only gives the ethical sig- 
nificance of his work convinc- 
ing authority, but stretches and 
expands indefinitely the nor- 
mal and wholesome range of 
human interest beyond the ar- 
bitrary and shifting limits set 
by different schools and suc- 
cessive generations of moral- 
ists. Shakespeare's ethical 
view of life was rooted in real- 
ities and had the large, vigor- 
ous vitality of an elemental 




354 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

order, spacious enough to admit of the full, free, 
and normal development of the human spirit on all 
sides. To a mind of such breadth of view and 
deep vitality as his any kind of asceticism was not 
only a violation of instinct but of the nature of 
man ; any kind of denial of the dignity of the body 
was as truly atheistic as any kind of denial of the 
reality -of the experiences of the spirit. Into the 
region of pure spiritual impulse and ultimate 
spiritual relationship Shakespeare did not pene- 
trate ; in that fact lies his limitation. If to his other 
gifts had been added the spiritual insight of Dante, 
he would have been not only the foremost but the 
ultimate interpreter of the life of the race. In the 
region of action, however, where spiritual impulses 
and convictions are worked into character, Shake- 
speare is a master of observation and of interpreta- 
tion. He sees the facts, and he sets them in their 
ethical order. In this field, therefore, his freedom, 
his range, and the vast variety of his interests are 
significant of the breadth and compass of normal 
human living. 

It is needless to prove that he was not a Puritan, 
to quote " I had as lief be a Brownist as a politi- 
cian," or " Though honesty be no Puritan, yet it 
will be no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility 
over the black gown of a big heart ; " by the very 
constitution of his mind Shakespeare was set apart 
for another service to his kind, and committed to a 
different view of life. The Puritan, with all his 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 355 

devotion and greatness of soul, was the master of a 
crisis, the man of a period, the representative of a 
phase of human development; Shakespeare was the 
master of the universal movement of life, the man 
of all time, the exponent of the full and free play of 
all the forces of personality. He stands, therefore, 
not for the occasional altitudes of human experi- 
ence, but its broad, general, productive movement ; 
for large, varied, many-sided, fertile life, with full 
play of instinct, passion, emotion, thought, and will ; 
for freedom in an ordered world, in which all normal 
human faculties and desires are to find normal ex- 
pression and use ; in which, however, law and 
proportion and harmony between different parts of 
the nature are to be preserved, the lower is to be 
subordinated to the higher, the individual kept in 
his place in the social order, and the institutional 
life of society sustained at any private cost. 

In such a world what was universal and endur- 
ing in the Puritan view was kept; what was pro- 
visional and divisive rejected. It was a world in 
which the Greek and the man of the Renaissance 
temper could live as freely as the man of the 
Hebrew spirit. It follows, therefore, that the ethi- 
cal order of Shakespeare's world must be found 
in the structure of that world, not in conventional 
or sectarian interpretations or expositions of its 
order. Shakespeare's morality is the morality of 
fundamental law, not of provisional • rules ; his 
righteousness is the righteousness of sane, whole- 



356 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

some, ordered living, not of conventional good 
behaviour. 

To a mind of Shakespeare's breadth of view no 
conception of the ethical constitution of things less 
fundamental was possible ; he saw too far to accept 
any local standards of right action or any provi- 
sional views of human duties. In the wide range 
of his vision of the fortunes of men the rigid and 
fixed bounds set to moral responsibility by sectarian 
moralists of every school lost their authority ; the 
vast complexity of experience, the immense range 
of conditions, the influence of institutions on char- 
acter, the pathetic and often tragic enfolding of a 
soul by circumstances which leave their stain and 
stamp upon it, the antagonistic elements which are 
at war in the noblest character — all these things 
touched Shakespeare's judgments with a great com- 
passion, and, while unflinching in his disclosure of 
the penalty which lies in the heart of the evil deed, 
made him slow to measure out moral condemnation 
to the evil-doer. He could not fail to be aware, 
with all men of imagination and insight, of the 
vaster movement which enfolds the obvious ethical 
order of life. Like Goethe in " Faust," and Haw- 
thorne in "The Marble Faun," he had glimpses of 
" a soul of goodness in things evil," divinations of a 
diviner reconciliation between conflicting elements 
than is accomplished on the narrow stage of the 
world. This deep mystery he could not probe; no 
man has sounded it; it enfolds us like an element 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 



357 






of which we suspect the existence, but which our 
instruments of observation are not sensitive enough 
to discover. Its presence does not diminish the 
authority of the ethical order 
under which we Hve and from 
which no man escapes, but it 
ought to make us more tolerant, 
compassionate, and patient in 
judgment and in punishment. 

" The web of our life is of a 
mingled yarn, good and ill to- 
gether," says the dramatist in 
one of the group of plays which 
are most perplexing to the mor- 
alist who lacks this vision of a 
larger order ; " our virtues would 
be proud if our faults whipped 
them not ; and our crimes would 
despair if they were not cher- 
ished by our virtues." 

This largeness of view gave 
Shakespeare the highest insight 
of the great tragic writer: the 
clear jDerception of the presence 
of a mediating element in life. 
Without this perception the 
highest form of tragedy is im- 
possible of realization ; for trag- 
edy is not only an exhibition of 
tragic events, but an interpre- 



358 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tation of their significance. Without this inter- 
pretation these events are bhnd happenings, — mere 
brutaHties of fate, without order, meaning, or im- 
pressiveness. If Shakespeare's view of Hfe was too 
broad to permit of a judgment of men from the 
standpoint of conventional moraHty, his insight was 
too deep and searching to rest in the violent colli- 
sions of contending principles, forces, and persons. 
He could not stop short of some kind of harmony ; 
violence in its destructive aspect had only a minor 
interest for him ; he cared for the storm because it 
cleared the air and prepared the way for a new and 
higher order of things. The deed reacts on the 
doer and brings doom with it, but the penalty is 
not inflicted as a matter of vengeance ; it opens the 
door to a reorsfanization of character. For the evil- 
doer, the violator of the order of society, the real 
tragedy is to be found in the offence, not in the 
penalty; and the greatest disaster comes not when 
the punishment is borne, but w^ien it is evaded. In 
this consistent representation of the inevitableness 
and necessity of the tragic disaster Shakespeare is 
in harmony with the soundest religious view of life 
and with the most intelligent psychology. As soon 
as personality is set free in society, directed by 
inward intelligence, will, or impulse, put under the 
necessity of subordinating impulse to intelligence, 
appetite to law, individual desire to the good of 
society, a series of tragic collisions is set in motion 
and a world of conflict rises into view. These con- 



ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRAGEDIES 



359 



flicts are precipitated when individual passion, pref- 
erence, or love is set in opposition to the family, as 
in "Romeo and Juliet" and "King Lear"; and 
when individual will, interest, or passion is set in 
opposition to the State, as in the historical plays, 
and in " Coriolanus," " Julius Caesar," and " Mac- 
beth." These are the two great classes of tragic 
conflict with which Shakespeare deals ; and his 
point of view is consistent throughout. Society is 
striving, in a rude and halting fashion, toward the 
attainment of harmony ; its institutions are often 
based on unrighteousness, they are perverted in 
their uses or they are outgrown ; in each case some 
kind of conflict is inevitable and that conflict takes 
a tragic form. These institutions impose order 
upon society; to that order each individual must 
adjust himself, and in it he must find his place ; if 
he sets his will against the general will as organized 
in these institutions he precipitates a conflict and be- 
comes a tragic figure. These conflicts are not casual 
and accidental; they represent the working out of the 
moral and institutional order, and they must, there- 
fore, find their ultimate issue in a deeper harmony. 

This is the Shakespearian interpretation of the 
tragic collisions of society. It is the clearness with 
which Shakespeare sees and represents this prin- 
ciple of mediation, this process of reconciliation, 
which gives the Tragedies their authority as works 
of art and sets the dramatist among the masters of 
the knowledge of life. 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE ROMANCES 



It was characteristic of Shakespeare that during 
the years in which the Tragedies were written, and 
while he was meditating upon the baffling problem 
of evil in the world, he was conducting his affairs 
with prudence and sagacity. The sanity of his 
nature, which held him to the great highways of 
human interest and rational human living, kept his 
genius in touch with reality at all points and con- 
tributed not a little to the richness and range of his 
creative activity. The assumption that the man of 
imagination cannot be a man of practical wisdom, 
and that there is an inherent antagonism between 
genius and sound judgment, has been disproved 
many times in the history of all the arts, and per- 
sists in the face of convincing historic refutation. 
There have been many men of rare and beautiful 
gifts who have lacked the capacity to deal strongly 
or intelligently with the practical side of life, and 
who have, therefore, been unable to make that 
adjustment to conditions and realities which is part 
of the problem of life and a chief part of its educa- 
tion. For this reason many men of noble imagina- 

360 



THE ROMANCES 36 I 

tion have missed the full unfolding of their genius 
and the complete harvesting of its fruits. Shake- 
speare was not one of those pathetic figures who, 
through some defect in spiritual organization, make 
splendid tragic failures — figures with whom his 
imagination was always busy, and who appear in 
nearly all the plays. He was the sounder and 
therefore the greater poet because in his life, as in 
his art, he held the balance between reality and 
ideality ; mounting into high heaven with effortless 
wing, like the lark in the meadows about Stratford, 
but returning with unerring instinct to the familiar 
and solid earth. 

During the decade between 1600 and 16 10, 
Shakespeare was adding to his properties at Strat- 
ford, he was making various investments, he was 
seeking to recover by suits at law moneys loaned 
to others, and he was steadily increasing his income 
from various sources. His purchase of New Place 
has been noted ; upon the death of his father the 
houses in Henley Street came into his possession, 
and in one of them his mother probably lived until 
her death in 1608. He enlarged by purchase the 
grounds of New Place ; he acquired a property of 
nearly a hundred and fifty acres in the neighbour- 
hood of Stratford ; he purchased an interest in the 
tithes of Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton ; and, 
both at Stratford and in London, he brought suits 
for the recovery of small debts. Like his father, he 
appears to have had no aversion to litigation ; but, 



362 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

on the other hand, there is nothing in the various 
records of the legal proceedings which he inaugu- 
rated, to show that he was oppressive or unjust to 
those with whom he had business dealings. In 
practical affairs he was sagacious, orderly, and busi- 
nesslike. That a poet collected a debt which was 
due him hardly furnishes rational ground for the 
theory that he must therefore have been a hard 
and grasping person. 

To the Tragedies succeeded a group of three 
plays which Dr. Dowden has happily classed as 
Romances, which completed Shakespeare's work 
as a dramatist and which hold a place by them- 
selves. It is true that " Henry VIII." came at 
the very end, but this spectacular play is Shake- 
speare's only in part, and is hardly to be counted 
among his representative and original works. 

A new note was struck in the romances, and 
that note is distinctly sounded in " Pericles," a play 
which is of Shakespearian authorship only in its 
most poetic passages. It seems to predict " The 
Tempest," " Cymbeline," " The Winter's Tale," as 
" The Two Gentlemen of Verona " predicts 
"Twelfth Night." Marina is of the same exqui- 
site order of womanhood as Miranda and Perdita. 
The poet's work on this drama was done when 
the period of tragedy was drawing to a close but 
was not yet at an end. The play probably appeared 
about 1607, 3.nd was probably completed by some 
playwright of inferior taste and ability. The 



364 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

plot was derived from various sources ; the story 
being one of great antiquity and having been 
very widely popular for several centuries before 
Shakespeare's time. It had been read on the Con- 
tinent in the " Gesta Romanorum," and in England 
in Gower's " Confessio Amantis " ; and it was retold 
in a prose romance by Lawrence Twine, which 
appeared in England in 1576. There is now sub- 
stantial agreement that the repellent parts of " Peri- 
cles " were written by another hand than Shake- 
speare's, and that to his genius is due the exquis- 
ite episode and romance of Marina, conceived and 
worked out with a delicacy of feeling, a refinement 
of sentiment, and a pervading atmosphere of poetry 
which are unmistakably Shakespearian, 

" Cymbeline " was included among the Tragedies 
by the editors of the First Folio ; but its pervading 
spirit and its peaceful and happy ending place it 
among the Romances. Shakespeare had passed 
through the period of tragedy into a deep and abid- 
ing peace, but the gayety of the earlier mood of the 
Comedies was no longer possible. However serene 
and calm the spirit of the poet, he could never 
again look at life without seeing the element of 
tragedy at work in it. That element became sub- 
ordinate and served chiefly to bring out certain 
gracious and beautiful qualities of nature, certain 
pure and almost spiritual personalities, but it was 
henceforth part of the mysterious experience of life 
to one who had sounded the depths of Hamlet's 



THE ROMANCES 365 

solitary melancholy and been abroad when all the 
fury of the elemental passions burst upon the head 
of Lear. In " Cymbeline," " The Winter's Tale," 
and " The Tempest," the tragic motive is intro- 
duced, and the tragic conflict would have worked 
out its inevitable wreckage if these later dramas 
had not been plays of reconciliation ; plays, that is, 
in which the movement of the tragic forces is 
arrested by repentance, by the return, through peni- 
tence, to the true order of life. In these conclud- 
ing dramas the destructive forces, which run their 
course in the Tragedies, are set in motion in order 
that they may furnish a background for the pres- 
entation of the healing and restoring power of 
remorse, penitence, reconciliation, forgiveness, and 
atonement. The dewy freshness of the world in 
" The Winter's Tale " and " The Tempest " is more 
penetrating in its unstained purity because the 
lightning still plays from the clouds which are fast 
dissolving along the horizon. 

Shakespeare was a dramatist during the period 
when his work touched its highest points of achieve- 
ment, and it betrays the absence of even rudimen- 
tary critical instinct to identify a dramatist with the 
wide range of characters which his imagination cre- 
ates in a purely objective mood. There are indi- 
vidual plays from which it would be an impertinence 
to attempt to infer the ethical attitude or the per- 
sonality of Shakespeare. On the other hand, it 
must also be remembered that Shakespeare was a 



366 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

poet before and after the dramatic period ; that the 
mask was not so consistently worn during the period 
of the Sonnets and of the Romances as during that 
of the Tragedies ; that he left a large body of work 
behind him, and that through this work there run 
certain consistent and fundamental conceptions of 
life and character; that this work, conceding uncer- 
tainty with regard to the exact chronology of each 
play, can be divided into four distinct periods. 
These facts have a bearing on the nature of Shake- 
speare's personality and experience which it is as 
uncritical to disresrard as it is uncritical to hold 
Shakespeare morally responsible for any sentiment 
put in the mouths of lago and Richard III. How- 
ever much or little the facts in Shakespeare's ex- 
perience may have had to do with his work as a 
creative artist, it is beyond question that he passed 
through distinct stages of artistic and intellectual 
unfolding; and, accepting the psychology of genius, 
the history of the man of genius as it has been re- 
corded in every art, and the revelation of the man 
of genius as it has been made by himself, Goethe 
serving as an example, it is rational to believe that 
the man and the artist in Shakespeare were in vital 
relationship from the beginning to the end. 

In his life of sustained productivity Shakespeare 
passed through four periods : a period of appren- 
ticeship, when he was learning both his trade and 
his art; a period of joyous and many-sided contact 
with the world and with men, during which he made 



THE ROMANCES 367 

his approach to life ; the period of the Tragedies, 
when he entered into life, sounded its depths of 
experience, and faced its problems ; and a period of 
reconciliation or mediation, when the tragic ele- 
ments found their place in a comprehensive and 
beneficent order. Out of this rich and vital con- 
tact with life the poet came at last into a mood at 
once serene, grave, and tender; he looked upon 
men with a deep and beautiful pity ; fortitude under 
calamity, charity for human weakness, faith in the 
power of human sweetness and purity, pervade the 
Romances and give them an interior beauty of which 
the exquisite poetry in which they are steeped seems 
only an outward vesture. That beauty was the re- 
flection of a nature of great richness, which, through 
deep and searching experience, had at last found 
peace in a wide vision, a catholic spirit, and a rev- 
erent faith in purity, goodness, and truth. 

In these latest plays the poet shows also a great 
sense of freedom ; a consciousness of inward power 
matched with outward skill which justifies him in 
becoming a law unto himself. The style is subor- 
dinated to the thought ; rhyme almost disappears ; 
weak endings increase in number; the iambic regu- 
larity of the blank verse is varied by new flexibility ; 
the harmony of the line is subordinated to that of 
the paragraph, and the music of the verse gains a 
richer and fuller movement ; and there is complete 
indifference to the traditional unities of time and 
place. These traditions had been modified or dis- 



368 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

carded at an early date, but in the Romances a new 
kind of unity is introduced, or at least illustrated, in 
an art so convincing that the mind accepts the new 
order of construction as if it were the order of na- 
ture. " The ideality of space which characterized 
the English stage of that time," writes Professor 
Ten Brink, " and of which the ideality of time was a 
necessary corollary, the ability of the prevailing 
drama to include a long chain of events throughout 
its entire course, permitted Shakespeare in tragedy 
to follow his inner bent, which impelled him to the 
psychological side of his subject. It permitted him 
to represent, as he loved to do, the evolution of a 
passion from its first beginnings to its climax ; and 
not seldom reaching still further back, to show us 
the soil in which it was to take root. It permitted 
him to show us a character unfolding before our 
eyes under the reciprocal influence of deed and 
experience, of action and environment. It enabled 
him thus in his tragedies to lay the chief weight 
upon the connection between the character and the 
acts of the tragic hero, or, what is the same thing, 
to devote the best part of his powers and endeav- 
ours to the dramatic unfolding of his characters." 

In the Tragedies this loosening of the bonds of 
time and place enabled Shakespeare to lay bare the 
very heart of the tragic conflict ; in the Romances 
it made it possible to bring together, for the full 
disclosure of the drama of mediation, distant coun- 
tries and times ; to bring within the compass of a 



THE ROMANCES 369 

play the most exquisite poetry and the most rugged 
prose ; to set on the same stage Perdita and Autoly- 
cus, Miranda and Cahban. 

" Cymbeline " marks the end of the period of 
tragedy, and the dominance of a new mood. It 
probably appeared about 1609. Dr. Forman, to 
whom reference has already been made, who com- 
bined the arts of a quack with the taste of a thea- 
tre-goer, and whose brief diary is an interesting 
contemporary record, saw the play at the Globe 
Theatre, but made no record of the date. The plot 
was drawn from various sources, and these diverse 
materials were fused and combined by the dramatist 
with a free hand. 

The story of Cymbeline and of his two sons was 
taken from Holinshed; the story of Imogen from 
Boccaccio's " Decameron " ; while some details of 
the plot suggest that Shakespeare drew upon well- 
known and oft-used motives of current fairy tales. 
To this source he was probably indebted for some 
of the most delicate and poetic touches in the life of 
Imogen with her brothers in the cave of Belarius. 
This rude but hospitable home, full of kingly grace 
and nobleness in woodland disguise, is set in strik- 
ing contrast to the court from which Imogen has 
fled. In this secluded cavern courage and integrity 
are preserved and trained against the day when 
they must bring in the new order, of which Imogen 
is the stainless and appealing protagonist. No 
lovelier image of chaste, self-sacrificing womanhood 



370 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

is to be found in the whole range of poetry. The 
poet has invested her with purity as with a garment 
w^hich she wears without consciousness either of its 
value or its perishableness. It is so much a part of 
her nature that she could not separate it from her- 
self. Her presence touches the rough lives of her 
brothers, and all their virtues shine through the 
disguise they wear. She mediates between her 
father and Belarius ; and she reconciles Cymbeline 
and Posthumus. Her gentleness is emphasized by 
the savage temper, the hard spirit, which run 
through the play, and which at the end, with exqui- 
site skill, are resolved into harmony by her spirit. 
Among all Shakespeare's lyrics there is none more 
noble than " Fear no more the heat of the sun," 
which is set like a gem in this drama of a woman's 
constancy. 

Robert Greene had done what he could, when 
Shakespeare was serving his apprenticeship, to ar- 
rest the growing reputation of the young dramatist, 
and had failed. A " Groatsworth of Wit bought 
with a Million of Repentance " is of interest now 
chiefly because of the reference to the poet which 
was meant to do him harm, but which has served to 
settle some interesting questions of time, and to 
show that he had been successful enough to awaken 
envy. In 1588, five years before the attack on 
Shakespeare, Greene brought out a story which, 
under the unattractive title of " Pandosto : the 
Triumph of Time," became one of the most popular 



THE ROMANCES 



371 



novels of the day, passing through at least fourteen 
editions. Its claims upon the interest of readers 




THE GUILD CHAPEL PORCH. 



were set forth on the title-page : " Wherein is dis- 
covered by a pleasant history, that although by the 
means of sinister fortune, Truth may be concealed, 
yet by Time in spite of fortune it is most manifestly 



372 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

revealed : pleasant for age to avoid drowsy thoughts, 
profitable for youth to eschew other wanton pas- 
times, and bringing to both a desired content. 
TempoiHs filia Veritas''' Time, if not in itself a 
mediating principle, is a necessary element in the 
work of mediation ; and this old-fashioned romance 
furnished both the tragic introduction and the 
happy and peaceful issue upon which Shakespeare's 
mind fastened after the period of the Tragedies. 
His hand saved Greene's story from oblivion ; it will 
always be remembered as the source from which 
" The Winter's Tale " was largely drawn. The 
tale in the " Decameron," in which Shakespeare 
had found suggestions for parts of " Cymbeline," 
was also laid under contribution in " The Winter's 
Tale." Autolycus was the last of a long list of 
jesters who had no literary progenitors and have 
left no successors ; they are the creatures of the 
play and overflow of Shakespeare's humour, his 
perception of the comic, his delight in contrasts 
and contradictions, with touches at times — -as in 
the Fool in "King Lear" — of fathomless pathos. 
So far as the name is concerned, Autolycus was 
of historic ancestry. 

The witty thief could claim divine ancestry, 
and Shakespeare may have found this representa- 
tive rascal in the pages of his Ovid. From these 
hints of classical characterization the poet expanded 
the rustic knavery, shrewdness, and inimitable 



THE ROMANCES 373 

self-assurance of this picturesque picker-up of 
other people's savings at country festivals and 
fairs. 

Shakespeare accepted Greene's geography with 
delightful indifference to its accuracy, and so fell 
into the historic blunder of giving Bohemia a sea- 
coast. Ben Jonson was quick to fall upon this 
mistake, not so much from malice or ill-feeling, 
probably, as from the natural irritation of a 
careful and exact mind with a person of such 
marvellous spontaneity and such semi-humorous 
indifference to details as Shakespeare. " Shake- 
speare wanted art and sometimes sense," Drum- 
mond of Hawthornden reports him as saying ; 
"for Shakespeare in a play brought in a number 
of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in 
Bohemia, where there is no sea near by some 
hundred miles." Shakespeare may have known 
this fact as definitely as Jonson knew it; or he 
may have been as ignorant of it as were many 
other well-informed men of his time. His interest, 
it is clear, was fastened upon facts of another order, 
and in a play in which the unity of time was set at 
naught by an interval of sixteen years between two 
acts, and the congruities of history are quietly 
ignored in order to secure a free field for a masterly 
drama of the imagination, geographical accuracy 
was a small matter. 

The play was produced about 161 1. It was put 



374 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

upon the stage of the Globe Theatre on the 15th 
of May in that year, on which occasion Dr. Forman 
was present and described it at some length in his 
" Book of Plays and Notes thereof." In November 
of the same year it was performed before the Court 
in the palace at Whitehall ; and two years later it 
was one of the plays chosen for presentation in the 
elaborate festivities with which the marriage of the 
Princess Elizabeth was celebrated. 

The early popularity of the play among theatre- 
goers has not been revived in modern times. Its 
essentially poetic quality has made " The Winter's 
Tale," to modern taste, a reading rather than an 
acting play; a drama of the imagination rather than 
of real life. The pastoral world in which Perdita 
moves was the last of those lovely pastoral worlds 
which Shakespeare created as refuges from the 
world of reality and places of reconciliation between 
the ideals and hopes of beautiful natures and the 
actualities which surrounded them. • 

Perdita is half woman and half creature of fairy- 
land ; in her rare and exquisite spirit there is a 
subtle affiliation with nature which allies her with the 
flowers, whose succession she has set in an immor- 
tal calendar; in her sweet and patient devotion she 
personifies that spirit of goodness which in the end 
binds the shattered parts of her w^orld into unity 
once more. In her speech, with its beguiling mel- 
ody and its enchanting imagery, she is the personi- 



THE ROMANCES 375 

fication of poetry. Among the Shakespearian 
women she represents the " eternal feminine " in its 
most poetic aspect ; for she mediates, not only 
between conflicting persons, but between nature 
and man. 

In power of pure invention, of creating plots, sit- 
uations, and episodes, Shakespeare was inferior to 
several of his contemporaries ; and if invention and 
originality were synonymous, as they are often 
taken to be, his rank would be below that of Jon- 
son, Fletcher, Marston, or Middleton. The fac- 
ulty of invention is, however, of small importance 
unless it be sustained by force of mind and inspired 
and directed by imagination. Many playwrights 
of the third or fourth rank have shown more 
fertility in inventing fresh situations and inci- 
dents than Shakespeare ; none of them has ap- 
proached him in originality. For originality does 
not consist in invention, but in insight, grasp, selec- 
tion, arrangement, and, above all, in vitalization. 
The creative faculty does not disclose itself in dex- 
terity or multiplicity of invention, but in the play of 
free, elemental power. " The great merit, it seems 
to me, of the old painters," wrote Mr. Lowell, " was 
that they did not try to be original." " To say 
a thing that everybody has said before," said 
Goethe, " as quietly as if nobody had ever said it, 
that is originality." 

Throughout his entire productive life, Shake- 
speare kept himself in closest touch with the expe- 



376 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

rience of the race as that experience Hes written in 
history and biography, and with the imaginative Hfe 
of the race as that Hfe has expressed itself in strik- 
ing and significant figures, and in stories full of 
deep human feeling for humour or for poetry. 

He knew the two chroniclers who were most 
popular in his time ; he was familiar with Plutarch 
and with some of the notable contemporary trans- 
lators ; he had intimate acquaintance with such 
collections of stories as Paynter's " Palace of Pleas- 
ure " ; and he read the novels or tales of his age 
with an artist's feeling for the truth of life or of 
poetry which they contained. He lived freely and 
deeply in his time ; indifferent to conventionalities 
save as they conformed to his conception of sane 
living, and to literary traditions save as they har- 
monized with his artistic instinct and intelligence. 
His greatness as a poet lies in his extraordinary 
genius for seeing the concrete fact, and in his unri- 
valled power of irradiating that fact with the insight 
and vision of the imagination. No man of his time 
exhibited such fertility and audacity of imagination, 
and no man so firmly based his artistic work on 
clear, uncompromising perception of actualities. 
He was at the same time the closest observer and 
the most daring idealist of his age. Through each 
successive period of his productive career he 
touched phase after phase of experience and pre- 
sented a long succession of characters. Beginning 
with the old chronicle plays, which he read with 



THE ROMANCES 377 

the truest historical perception and feeling, he 
passed on to the humorous aspects of life, and 
thence to a study of its most appalling aspects ; and 
at each stage he laid hold upon some human docu- , 
ment in history, legend, tradition, or romance. He 
never lost his touch with the realities of life ; and | 
he found so much that was of supreme significance 1 
that he rarely had occasion to use invention. The 
race in many lands and at many periods of time 
had been at work storing up the raw material of 
poetry for him ; he entered into partnership with 
the race, and, by rationalizing its experience and 
giving it the beauty and order of art, repaid the 
race a thousand fold for the material of every sort 
which had been placed in his hands. In this mas- 
terful dealing, not with images of his own making, 
but with the actualities of human experience, is to 
be found his originality — an originality identical 
in its method and operation with the originality of 
Homer, Dante, and Goethe, who share with him 
the splendid loneliness of supreme literary achieve- 
ment. 

In " The Tempest " Shakespeare used existing 
material only in the remotest way; the play fash- 
ioned itself largely in his imagination. In the earlier 
dramas he had dealt entirely with past conditions 
and incidents ; the " Merry Wives of Windsor " is 
the only one of his works which may be said to 
deal with contemporary society and manners. " The 
Tempest," however, so far as it was rooted in real- 



378 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ity, was drawn by suggestion from stirring events 
in his own time. The poet, more than any of his 
contemporaries, jDersonified the freedom, vitality, 
keen sense of reahty, and wide discursive interests 
of the EHzabethan age ; in " The Tempest " he 
touched the new world of wonder, adventure, and 
achievement fast coming to the knowledge of the 
old world. Strange tidings of new countries and 
peoples were coming up from time to time from the 
far seas, and marvellous stories of strange lands and 
perilous voyages were told by quiet English fire- 
sides. In the autumn of 1610 a great sensation 
was made in London by the arrival of a company 
of sailors who had been wrecked off the Bermudas, 
until that moment undiscovered. These sailors, 
like all men of their occupation, were lovers of mar- 
vels and spinners of strange tales ; they had found 
the climate of the Bermudas charming, and they 
had heard many inexplicable sounds in the islands. 
These experiences were not dulled in colour by the 
homeward voyage ; on the contrary, they gained in 
marvellous and mysterious accompaniments of sight 
and sound as the distance lengthened between the 
place where they befell the wrecked crew and the 
places in which they were heard with eager and 
uncritical ears. 

The wreck of the Sea-Venture, Sir George 
Somers commanding, was described at length by 
several survivors, the most important of these 
accounts being that entitled " A Discovery of the 



THE ROMANCES 379 

Bermudas, otherwise called the He of Divels," 
which was reenforced by several pamphlets. Ac- 
cording to these reports the island of Bermudas 
had never been " inhabited by any Christian or 
heathen people " ; it was reported " a most pro- 
digious and enchanted place," " still-vexed " with 
" monstrous thunder-storms and tempests." On 
the night the ship was wrecked the Admiral 
himself "had an apparition of a little, round light, 
like a faint star, trembling and streaming along 
with a sparkling blaze, half the height above the 
main-mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud 
to shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any 
of the four shrouds." 

The stories of this marvellous voyage were 
undoubtedly heard by Shakespeare, and he cer- 
tainly read these narratives before writing of the 
" still-vexed Bermoothes," of the climate of the 
Island in " The Tempest," and of the spirits which 
frequented it. Traces of the reading of other 
books of travel are found in the play. It is pos- 
sible also that Shakespeare may have heard from 
English actors, who had performed at Nuremberg 
a few years before this time, the plot of a comedy 
written by Jacob Ayrer, of that city, under the 
title " Die Schone Sidea." It is also possible 
that there may have been an earlier play or novel 
of a somewhat similar plot, which has entirely 
disappeared. The famous description of an ideal 
commonwealth which is put in the mouth of Gon- 



2,8o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

zalo was suggested to Shakespeare by an essay 
of Montaigne's which he read in Florio's transla- 
tion ; while the Invocation of Prospero may owe 
something to one of Ovid's " Metamorphoses," 
with which the poet had long been familiar. 

After recognizing his indebtedness for certain 
details to various earlier and contemporary sources, 
" The Tempest " remains preeminently the crea- 
tion of Shakespeare's imagination. In certain 
respects it is his masterpiece. As a drama it 
falls far below his earlier work; as a poem, cast 
in a dramatic form, it is one of the most beautiful 
creations in English poetry. The profound medi- 
tativeness and rich intellectual quality of " Ham- 
let " are fused in it with the lovely fancy of the 
" Midsummer Night's Dream," while in deep and 
sustained play of imagination, fashioning the play 
in its structure, shaping its parts to one high end, 
touching it everywhere with a kind of ultimate 
beauty, it stands alone not only in Shakespeare's 
work but in modern poetry. The nobleness of 
conception is matched throughout with a kindred 
nobleness of style ; while the songs are full of the 
deep, spontaneous melody which issues out of 
the heart of the poet when sound and sense are 
perfectly mated in his imagination. 

The profound seriousness of temper which per- 
vades the play, the clearness with which its ethical 
bearings are disclosed, the deep philosophy which 
underlies it, convey an irresistible impression of 



THE ROMANCES 



38- 



■"T 



,j\ , ^iJ- 



THE 

TEMPEST. 



'tyJ iluiprtmui^Scfna prima. 



■.,r'.i Sk,fm.tfu-l- ,Mrd „ Bi-ieju-.tm,:. 

•*l^/'i' Pm,: Hcei-fM.,i1cr:U-h.uc!ircrc> 
%M)j Ar'isi. <;ocd.Spc«kct>.i!rMariiu:r<: U\\ 
^''^^^^^t^.o'r.'v.ircly, otw.-iu.i our iclucs agrourui, 



■are.yaic .T.-.k:ii 
Nhililc, Blow till 

lOUgh. 



Ur'.Mr.<i;t.-m. 

r-.i. iluvicly, rhcefcly my harts; 

f u>r pi-lM- : Trad to th'SuiliTs 



rr /l.'anfi, Srhj7iM. .Jillwtis, Trriiiiianili, 
Cm u!<'A'<^ other!, 
j^/m. Good BoiclV.ainc liaive carir ■ where's the Ma. 
ftcT?lJiayihenifn. 

'Sarr].'] prav now kecpchelow. 

Jith. Wh«c is the M.nll f r, Bcfon ? 

Boief Dc\ca ncthrare him = you marrc our labour, 
KccpeyoutCabincs ryoiiaoafsilUhellormc. • 

Cijflz-.Nay, good bep-itient, 

Botff. When the .S>s is : hence, what cares thefc roa- 
rers for the name of King ? to CabiiiCj lllence .■ trouble 
vs'tiflt, 

<jtf»;. Good, yet rem ember whom thoii baft aboord. 

Batcf. None that I more loue then my iVIfc. You arc 
a Counfellor,ifyou can command ihcfe Elements to fi- 
Icnce, and worke the peace of the prclcnt, wee will not 
hand a rope more. \fc your juthoritie: Ifyou cannot, 
giuc thankesyou haueliu'dCo long, and make your 
(elfe rcadic in your Cabine for the mifchancc of the 
houre, ifit fohap. Checrely good hearts : out of our 
way I lay. Ej-'ii, 

Gen. I naue great comfort from this fcllow:mcthinks 
he hath no drowning markevpon him, his complexion 
isprrfca Gallowes ; ftandfaft good Fate to his han- 
ging, make the rope of his dcftiny our ca.ble, foronr 
owne doth little aduantage: Ifhebe not bonrc tobec 
hang'djour cafe is miferable, Exa. 

Emcr-Boufwamn. 

Bii(f/Oowne with the top-Maft:yarc,lower,lowcr, 

bring net to Try with Mainc-courfe. A plague- 

ACTJ aithiH. Eilc Sttafiian ,Aiaboai(! & gcnzjlo. 



vpoii tliis howling: tlu-y are lo-.vtier thrn the weather, 
or our ol'ik-e : yct'jgamc ? W hat do ycu hccrc:" Shal we 
oiucore aiiddrovvne,haiieyou amindeto linkc? 

Sei.tf, A poxe o'vour throat.you bnvling, bJafpiic- 
mousincharitahlebog. 

■AV.v/ Worke you then. 
^r-.th. Hang cur.haiigjV&u wtiorefon infolent Noyfe- 
makcr.we 3rclcfi'e.-(i,i"d'tobe drownde,then thou art. 

^/y«^. rie warrant him tor drownin;;, though the 
Ship were no (Irongcr then 1 Nutt-fhell/and as lesky as 
an vni^anchcd wench. 

Sorr/TLjyheraholdiahold, fet hcrtwo courfes eft" 
to S e J a ga in e, I ay li er off. 

Bnln-Mirmmtrct. 
A/jri. All lofl,to prayerSjto prayers,all \oB, 
'Eotrf. What niurt ou'r mouths be cold (■ 
GoKi.TheKing,aiidPrince,atpravers,lct's3{lllithcm, 
forourcafcisasthelis. 
Se6af. I'am out of patience. 

An. We aremecrly cheated ofourliuci by drunkard)'. 
This wide- chopt-rafcall,would thou migh'tft lye drow- 
ning the wartiing often Tides. 

Coxz,. Hee'l be hang'd yet. 
Though euery drop of water fweate againlVit. 
And gape aiwidfl to glut him. Accr.fufid ncjfi vithm. 
Metcyon vs. 

We fplit,-we fplit , Farewell my wife.and children, 
Farewell brother ; we fplit.we I'plitjWC fplit. 
Anth. Let's all finke with" King 
St6. Lct'stakeleaueof him. EatiI, 

Gonz^. Now would 1 giue a thoufand furlongs of Sea, 
for an Acre of barren giound .- Long heath , Browne 
firrs, any thing; the wills aboue be done, butlwould 
faine dye a dry death, Rxtt. 

ScenaSecunda. 

Untrr Trojpera jad fliirarjji. 
Mm. If by your Art(mv dccrert fatherjyouhaue 
Put the wild waters in this Kore;olay them: 
The jkye it feemcs would powre down ftinkingpitch, 
But that the Sea.mountlng to th' welkins chceke, 
Diflics the fireout. Oh 1 1 haue fuiFerrd 
With thofe that I fiw fuffer: A bt^ue vefTell 

A r-Vho 



FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF "THE TEMPEST" IN THE FOLIO OF 1623. 



382 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

something personal in the theme and the treat- 
ment. It is impossible to read " The Tempest " 
without a haunting sense of secondary meaning. 
Caliban, Miranda, and Prospero have been inter- 
preted from many points of view; a final and con- 
vincing interpretation will never be made, but the 
instinctive feeling of Shakespeare's readers and 
lovers that in this last play from his hand the poet 
was bidding farewell to his art is probably sound. 
As a rule, critics err rather in diminishing than 
expanding the significance of great works of art. 

"The Tempest" appeared about 161 1. Shake- 
speare was then forty-seven years of age, and had 
nearly completed his work. When he set the 
noble figure of Prospero on the unknown island, 
and made him master of spirits and of men, with 
a knowleds:e of life which was so grreat that it 
easily passed on into magical art, he could not 
have been oblivious of the spiritual significance 
of the work, nor of its deep and vital symbolism 
in the development of his own mind and art. 

The success of " The Tempest " appears to have 
been great ; it was presented at Court, and was one 
of the plays performed during the marriage festivi- 
ties of the Princess Elizabeth in 161 3. One 
source of this popular interest was probably the 
charm of the songs which gave the movement 
pause and relief. There is good reason to believe 
that these songs were set to music by Robert 
Johnson, a popular composer of the day, and 



THE ROMANCES 383 

that two of them had been preserved in Wil- 
son's " Cheerful Ayres and Ballads set for Three 
Voices." 

Shakespeare completed no more plays after the 
appearance of " The Tempest," but he had a shap- 
ing hand in " Henry VIII.," which appeared about 
161 2 and is included among his works. This 
very uneven and very spectacular drama is based 
upon material found in Hall and Holinshed, in 
a life of Wolsey by George Cavendish, then in 
manuscript, and in Foxe's " Acts and Monu- 
ments of the Church." Its performance on June 29, 
161 3, led to the burning of the Globe Theatre 
— an event of which there are several contem- 
porary accounts. The play w^as presented with 
unprecedented elaboration in scenery and dress — 
a first attempt, apparently, in the direction of the 
splendour of appointments which characterizes the 
modern stage. " Now King Henry making a 
Masque at the Cardinal Woolsey's House," writes 
Wotton, " and certain Canons being shot off at his 
entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith 
one of them was stopped, did light on the Thatch, 
where being thought at first but an idle smoak, 
and their eyes more attentive to the show, it 
kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, con- 
suming within less than an hour the whole House 
to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of 
that virtuous fabrique ; wherein yet nothing did 
perish, but wood and straw and a few forsaken 



384 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

cloaks." And the old chronicler of this first of 
many similar catastrophes adds with naive humour: 
" Only one man had his breeches set on fire, that 
would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by 
the benefit of a provident wit put out with bottle 
ale." 

Attention was directed in the last century to cer- 
tain peculiarities of versification in " Henry VIII.," 
but it was not until the middle of the present cen- 
tury that Mr. Spedding set forth at length the 
theory that the play was Shakespeare's in part 
only, and that many passages were in the manner 
of Fletcher. It is interesting that these differences 
in style were recognized clearly, not by scholars, 
but by two men of sensitive literary feeling, Tenny- 
son and Emerson. The English poet first made 
the suggestion to Mr. Spedding. Emerson's com- 
ments on the matter are full of insight : 

" In Henry VIII. I think I see plainly the crop- 
ping out of the original work on which his own 
finer stratum was laid. The first play was written 
by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. 
I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. 
See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene 
with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of 
Shakespeare, whose secret is that the thought con- 
structs the tune, so that reading for the sense will 
bring out the rhythm — here the lines are con- 
structed on a given tune, and the verse has even a 
trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains 



THE ROMANCES 385 

through all its length unmistakable traits o£ Shake- 
peare's hand, and some passages, as the account of 
the coronation, are like autographs." 

The view, presented with great skill by Mr. Sped- 
ding, that Shakespeare intended to make a " great 
historical drama on the subject of Henry VIII., 
which would have included the divorce of Katha- 
rine, the fall of Wolsey, the rise of Cranmer, the 
coronation of Anne Bullen, and the final separation 
of the English from the Roman Church ; " that 
he worked on the two first acts, and that, for some 
unknown reason the manuscript was passed on to 
Fletcher, who expanded it into the play as we now 
have it, has been accepted by many students of the 
play. The three chief figures — the King, Queen 
Katharine, and the Cardinal — are unmistakably 
Shakespeare's in conception ; and the trial scene 
is certainly his. 

There are traces of Shakespeare's hand in the 
" Two Noble Kinsmen," which the title-page de- 
clares was written by " Mr. John Fletcher and 
Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentlemen," and the 
play appears in some editions of the poet's works. 
It is impossible, however, to decide with any cer- 
tainty the extent of Shakespeare's contribution to a 
drama which in many parts is clearly the produc- 
tion of another hand. .It is not improbable, as has 
been suggested by some authorities, that when 
Shakespeare withdrew from active work in his pro- 
fession he may have left some preliminary sketches 



386 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

for half-finished dramas behind him, and that it fell 
to the lot of Fletcher or some other contemporary 
dramatist to work over and complete what the poet 
had begun. With the writing of " Cymbeline " and 
" The Tempest " Shakespeare's work ended. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 

It is impossible to overlook the recurrence of cer- 
tain incidents and the reappearance of certain figures 
in the Romances. " Pericles," " Cymbeline," " The 
Winter's Tale," and " The Tempest " are all dramas 
of reconciliation ; tragic events occur in each of 
these plays and tragic forces are set in motion, but 
the tragic movement is arrested by confession and 
repentance and the tragic forces are dissipated or 
turned to peaceful ends by meditation and reconcil- 
iation. Coming close upon the long-sustained 
absorption in tragic motives, the singular unity of 
the Romances in organizing conception, in serenity 
of mood, and in faith in purity and goodness and 
love as solvents of the problems of life, make it 
impossible to escape the conclusion that the later 
plays record and express the final attitude of the 
poet towards the ultimate questions of life. 

The chief figures in the Romances are men and 
women who have borne heavy sorrows — Prospero, 
Hermione, Imogen, Pericles, and the fair young 
creatures whose purity and sweetness typify the 
immortal qualities of youth — Marina, Miranda, 

387 



^88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Perdita, Florizel, Ferdinand, and the brothers of 
Imogen. Behind these suffering or radiant figures 
there is, in each play, a pastoral background of ex- 
quisite loveliness ; a landscape so noble and serene 
that it throws the corruption of courts and of soci- 
ety into striking relief. In each play there is a trace 
of the old fairy story — the story of the lost prince 
or princess, condemned to exile, disguise, or servi- 
tude ; and in the end the lost are found, disguises 
are thrown off, evil plots are exposed and evil plot- 
ters brought to repentance ; suffering is recognized 
and finds its sweet reward in the rebuilding of its 
shattered world on a sure foundation, and youth 
finds eager expectation merged in present happi- 
ness. Prospero does not break his magic staff or 
drown his book until he has reknit the order of life 
shattered in the Tragedies, and reunited the wisdom 
of lonQT observation and mature knowledo-e with the 
fresh heart and the noble idealism of vouth. 

In such a mood Shakespeare returned to Strat- 
ford about 1611. He was forty-seven years of age, 
and therefore at the full maturity of his great pow- 
ers. From the standpoint of to-day he was still a 
young man ; but men grew old much earlier three 
centuries ago. The poet had been in London 
tw^enty-five years, and had written thirty-six or 
thirty-seven plays, and a group of lyric poems. He 
was still in his prime, but he had lived through the 
whole range of experience, he was a man of consid- 
erable fortune, and he had a wholesome ambition to 



THE LAST ^EARS AT STRATFORD 389 

become a country gentleman, with the independence, 
ease, and respect with which landed proprietorship 
has always been regarded in England. 

His sources of income had been his plays, which 
were paid for, in his earlier years, at rates varying 
from twenty-five to sixty dollars — equivalent in 
present values to two hundred and fifty and six 
hundred dollars ; his salary as an actor, which was 
probably not less than five hundred dollars a year, 
or about three thousand dollars in present values ; 
the returns from the sale of his poems, which ran 
through many editions, and the profits of which his 
publisher undoubtedly divided with him on some 
acceptable basis ; and, most important of all, his 
revenue from his shares in the Blackfriars and Globe 
theatres. 

The Globe Theatre provided room for an audi- 
ence of about two thousand people, and for a num- 
ber of years before its destruction by fire in 161 3 
was almost continuously prosperous. The trans- 
ference of public interest to the boy actors, though 
long enough to send Shakespeare's company into 
the provinces, was comparatively short-lived. It is 
estimated that the annual receipts of the Globe 
Theatre did not fall below the very considerable sum 
of two hundred thousand dollars in current values. 
After providing for the maintenance of the theatre, 
there must have remained a substantial profit. 
This profit was divided among the shareholders, 
among whom were Shakespeare, Burbage, Condell, 



390 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



^{iv- 



Heminge, and Philips ; all were actors and mem- 
bers of the company, and combined personal interest 
and practical knowledge in theatrical management. 
The profits of the Blackfriars Theatre were smaller. 
Shakespeare's great popularity after 1598 or 1600 

^w^_.. ^, ^_-„.>-._--, probably enabled him to 

Lpj^^*/^Xi'^,»,^j?^^r, ^(-^'T'i'^ secure much larger re- 
turns from the sale of 
new plays than were paid 
to the majority of play- 
wrights ; while the fees 
always distributed at 
Court performances must 
have amounted, in his 
case, to a very consider- 
able sum. From these 
various sources Shake- 
speare probably received, 
during the later years of 
his life, not less than 
fifteen thousand dollars 
a year in current values. 
Mr. Lee, who has made a 
thorough investigation of the subject, thinks there 
is no inherent improbability in the tradition, re- 
ported by a vicar of Stratford in the following 
century, that Shakespeare " spent at the rate of a 
thousand a year." 

The poet had become the owner of various prop- 
erties at Stratford or in its neighbourhood. The 




SHAKESPEARE'S SIGNATURE. 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 



391 



houses in Henley Street had come into his posses- 
sion. The house at New Place, in which he took 
up his residence, was a commodious and substantial 
building; and the grounds, with the exception of a 
thin wedge of land on Chapel Lane, extended almost 
to the Avon. His circumstances were those of a 
country gentleman of ample income. 

When Shakespeare left London, he probably 
withdrew from participation in the management of 
the two theatres in which he was a shareholder, but 
his plays continued to be presented. His popularity 
suffered no eclipse until the fortunes of the stage 
began to yield to the rising tide of Puritan senti- 
ment. During the festivities attending the marriage 
of the Princess Elizabeth, seven of his plays were 
presented at Whitehall. That he made the three 
days' journey to London at short intervals and kept 
up his old associations is practically certain. 

His son Hamnet had died in the summer of 1 596 ; 
his father died in the early autumn of 1601, and 
his mother in September, 1608. When he took up 
his residence in Stratford in 161 1, his wife and two 
daughters constituted his family. The eldest 
daughter, Susannah, had married, in June, 1607, 
Dr. John Hall, a physician of unusual promise, who 
became at a later day a man of very high standing 
and wide acquaintance in Warwickshire. The 
house in which he lived is one of the most 
picturesque buildings which have survived from 
the Stratford of Shakespeare's time. Dr. Hall's 



392 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

daughter, Elizabeth, the only granddaughter of the 
poet, was born in 1608. Mrs. Hall made her home 
in her later years at New Place ; there, in 1643, she 
entertained Queen Henrietta Maria ; and there, in 
1649, she died. In the inscription on her grave in 
the churchyard of Holy Trinity both her father and 
husband are described as " gentlemen." Of her it 
was written : 

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, 
Wise to Salvation was good Mistress Hall. 
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this 
Wholly of him with whom she's now in blisse. 

Her daughter Elizabeth married Thomas Nashe, a 
Stratford man of education, and, after his death, 
John Barnard, who was knighted by Charles H. 
soon after the Restoration. Lady Barnard, who 
was the last direct descendant of the poet, died in 
1670. She had come into possession, by various 
bequests, of New Place, the Henley Street houses, 
the land in the neighbourhood of Stratford, and a 
house in Blackfriars purchased by Shakespeare in 
161 3. The houses in Henley Street passed at her 
death into the possession of the grandson of Shake- 
speare's sister Joan, and remained in the family, as 
reported in a previous chapter, until the present 
century. New Place was sold after Lady Barnard's 
death, and subsequently came again into the hands 
of the Clopton family. 

Judith Shakespeare married, shortly before her 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 



393 



fathers death in 1616, Thomas Quiney, a wine- 
dealer of Stratford, and hved for thirty-six years in 
a house still standing at the southeast corner of 



High and 



Bridge streets in Stratford. It was 



known at that time as The Ca^e, because it had 




THE DINING-HALL AT CLOPTON. 



been used at an earlier period as a prison. The 
foundation walls of this ancient house are four feet 
in thickness ; books and Shakespearian souvenirs 
of every kind are now sold in the shop on the 
ground floor. Judith Shakespeare had three sons, 
all of whom died in infancy or early youth. She 



394 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

survived her family and her sister Susannah, and 
died in 1661, at the age of seventy-six. 

The records show that after his retirement to 
Stratford Shakespeare continued to give careful 
attention to his affairs and to take part in local 
movements. In 161 3 he bought the house in 
Blackfriars, not far from the theatre, which subse- 
quently passed into the possession of Lady Barnard. 
The deeds of conveyance, bearing Shakespeare's 
signature, are still in existence. Comment has 
sometimes been made on the fact that the poet 
spelled his name in different ways, and that other 
people spelled it with complete disregard of consist- 
ency, and it has been inferred that he must have 
been, therefore, an ignorant person. A little investi- 
gation would have shown that in the poet's time 
there was great variation in the spelling of proper 
names. Men of the eminence of Sidney, Spenser, 
Jonson, and Dekker were guilty of the same latitude 
of practice in this matter, and even Bacon, on one 
occasion at least, spelled his name Bakon. 

Shakespeare's friend John Combe, at his death 
in 16 14, left the poet a small bequest in money and 
a legal entanglement. The attempt of Combe's 
son to enclose certain fields at Welcombe which 
had long been common was vigorously opposed by 
the corporation of Stratford. Both as the owner of 
neighbouring property and as joint owner of the 
tithes of old Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton, 
Shakespeare had an interest in the matter which 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 



395 



arrayed him at the start in active opposition to the 
plan to enclose the property. A record in the 
diary of Thomas Greene, the town clerk of Strat- 
ford, shows that Shakespeare was an influential 
person in the dispute, and that he was in London 
in the autumn of 1614. 

There is reason to believe that Puritanism had 
gained many adherents in Stratford, and that the 
poet's son-in-law. Dr. Hall, was in sympathy with 
the movement. The town records indicate that 
in 1 6 14 a clergyman was entertained at New 
Place ; the entry is suggestive of hospitality : " Item, 
for one quart of sack and one quart of clarett wine 
geven to a preacher at New Place, xxd." It is 
probable that the preacher was a Puritan, but the 
fact furnishes no clew to Shakespeare's ecclesiastical 
leanings. Aside from the bent of his mind and his 
view of life, so clearly disclosed in the plays, he 
could hardly have been in sympathy with the Puri- 
tan attitude towards his own profession. The 
temper of Stratford had changed greatly since the 
days when, as a boy, he saw the companies of 
players receive open-handed hospitality at the hands 
of the town officials. Two years earlier, in 161 2, 
the town council had passed a resolution declaring 
that plays were unlawful and " against the example 
of other well-governed cities and boroughs," and 
imposing a penalty on players. 

Early in 161 6 Shakespeare had a draft of his will 
prepared, and this document, after revision, was 



396 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



signed in March. On Tuesday, April 23, he died; 
and two days later he was buried inside the chancel 
of Holy Trinity Church, near the northern wall. 
Over his grave were cut in the stone lines that 
have become familiar throughout the English-speak- 
ing world : 

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forebeare 
To dig the dust enclosed heare ; 
Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones. 




THE INSCRIPTION OVER THE 



William Hall, who visited Stratford in 1694, de- 
clared that these words were written by the poet to 
protect his dust from clerks and sextons, " for the 
most part a very ignorant set of people," who might 
otherwise have consigned that dust to the charnel- 
house which was close at hand. The verse, by 
whomever written, has accomplished its purpose, 
and the sacred dust has never been disturbed. 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 397 

With a single exception, the line of graves which 
extends across the chancel pavement is given up 
to members of the poet's family. His wife, his 
daughter Susannah and her husband, and his 
granddaughter Elizabeth's first husband, Thomas 
Nashe, lie together behind the chancel rail in the 
venerable church which has become, to the English- 
speaking world, the mausoleum of its greatest poet. 
Shakespeare's father and mother were buried within 
the church, but their graves have not been located. 




I 

GRAVE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



His daughter Judith and his son Hamnet undoubt- 
edly lie within the walls of the church or of the ancient 
burying-ground which surrounds it. His brother Ed- 
mund, who was a player, was buried in St. Saviour's 
Church, Southwark, in the heart of modern London. 
His brother Richard, who died in his early prime at 
Stratford in 161 3, was probably buried in the 
churchyard of Holy Trinity. His brother Gilbert 



39S WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

lived to a good age, and no record of his death 
or burial has been discovered. 

Shakespeare's will, written on three sheets of 
paper, and signed at the bottom of each page, 
begins with the conventional phrases, bears a 
number of erasures and interlineations, and the 
three signatures indicate great weakness. Under 
its provisions the poet's wife received his second- 
best bed with its furnishings ; his daughter Susannah 
inherited the greater part of the estate, including 
New Place, the properties in the neighbourhood of 
Stratford, and the house in Blackfriars, London ; 
and she and her husband were made executors and 
residuary legatees. To his younger daughter Judith, 
who married Thomas Quiney earlier in the same 
year, he left a small property on Chapel Lane and 
money to an amount equal to about eight thousand 
dollars in current values, and certain pieces of plate. 
Bequests were made to his sister Joan and her 
three sons. To several of his Stratford friends, 
and to his old associates or " fellows " in London, 
John Heminge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Con- 
dell, small sums of money were bequeathed for the 
purchase of memorial rings. His godson, William 
Walker, was remembered, and a sum of money 
equivalent to about three hundred dollars in pres- 
ent values was left to the poor of Stratford. The 
omission of Shakespeare's wife from the distribution 
of his estate under the terms of his will has been 
accepted by some writers as evidence of the poet's 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 



399 



waning regard; the most reasonable inference from 
his action is that Dr. Hall, who was a man of un- 
usual capacity, could be trusted to care for his 
wife's mother with more assurance than she could 
be left to manage her own affairs. She survived 
her husband seven years, dying on August 6, 1623. 
The Latin verses inscribed upon her tomb are 
affectionate in tone, and were probably written by 
Dr. Hall. 



^rA^/5LUAM Shakespeare, who DEer^b this life th 
j0,$^ofMGv:i<^7K§^G OF th; Age cmf ■ (|7. yeakes 

": WBera ,IlU irKep-^u lac rvitam(j;'3ec{i ■ -' 
' ^ ^fed imKi '^o fahip m ssxa ■dabo :: i^ 

;^:Q^ani -iTLsJSem^xmo^^ kpidem ;l)omiS;Angil ore 

'-^Xxeatjchri^i^ corpus /im ;> 

> ^'^ Clairf^: iicii tuBiuio n-iaier;:et AStm pete^.. 



INSCRIPTION OVER THE GRAVE OF SHAKESPEARE'S WIFE. 

On the north wall of the chancel of Holy Trinity, 
at some time prior to 1623, the half-length bust of 
Shakespeare by Gerard Jonson, to which reference 
has been made, was erected. The poet is repre- 
sented in the act of writing, and the inscription 
reads as follows : 



Jiidicio Pyliui?i, genio Socrateni, arte ATarotiem 
Terra tegit, popidus mceret, Olympics habet. 

Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast ? 
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 



400 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Within this monument : Shakespeare : with whome 
Quick Nature dide ; whose name doth deck ye tombe 
Far more than cost ; sieth all yt he hath writt 
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. 

ObntAno.Doi.i6i6. JEtatis ^3. Die 2j. Ap. 

The bust was originally coloured, and was probably 
copied from a mask taken after death. The dress 
includes a scarlet doublet under a loose, sleeveless 
black gown. As a work of art the bust has no 
merit; its interest lies in the fact that, despite its 
crude workmanship, it was accepted and placed 
in position by Shakespeare's children. It was 
whitewashed at the close of the last century, but 
the colours have been restored as far as possible. 

The most important of the various portraits of 
the poet is that made by Martin Droeshout, and 
printed on the title-page of the First Folio in 1623. 
The engraver was a man of Flemish blood, born 
in London, and still in his boyhood when Shake- 
speare died. It is not probable that he ever saw 
the poet. This representation, crude as it is, was 
accepted by Shakespeare's friends and received the 
commendation of Ben Jonson. When Droeshout 
executed the engraving, he probably had before 
him a painting, and there is reason to believe that 
this painting was recently brought to light and now 
hangs in the Memorial Picture Gallery at Stratford. 
It is almost a facsimile of the Droeshout engraving, 
but shows some artistic skill and feeling. 

A much more attractive portrait is that known 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 40I 

as the " Ely House " portrait, which now hangs in 
the Birthplace at Stratford, and was formerly the 
property of a Bishop of Ely. It was probably 
painted early in the seventeenth century. The 
well-known Chandos portrait, which hangs in the 
National Portrait Gallery in London, shows im- 
portant variations from the bust and the Droeshout 
engraving, and was probably painted not many 
years after the poet's death from descriptions fur- 
nished by his friends and more or less imaginative 
in their details. Its origin is unknown, but its 
history has been traced. It was at one time the 
property of D'Avenant, whose father was landlord 
of the Crown Inn at Oxford in Shakespeare's time, 
and, later, of Betterton, Mrs. Barry, and the Duke 
of Chandos, becoming the property of the nation 
about the middle of the present century. The Jan- 
sen portrait came to light about 1770, the Zoust 
portrait about 1725, and the Felton portrait about 
1792; all show radical variations from the authen- 
ticated portraits. The portrait bust of terra-cotta 
now in the possession of the Garrick Club was 
found in 1845 ^^ ^ wall which was put up on the 
site of the Duke's Theatre built by D'Avenant. 
Its general resemblance to other portraits furnishes 
the only basis for the claim that it reproduces the 
features of Shakespeare. The Kesselstadt death- 
mask, found in a junk-shop in Mayence in 1849, 
resembles a portrait in the possession of the Kessel- 
stadt family, but neither the portrait nor the mask 



402 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

has been satisfactorily identified as a representation 
of the poet. The monument in the Poets' Corner 
in Westminster Abbey was placed in position by 
popular subscription in 1741. 

The most enduring memorial of Shakespeare 
was the complete edition of his works, known as 
the First Folio, published in 1623, seven years after 
his death. His early narrative poems, " Venus and 
Adonis " and " The Rape of Lucrece," were pub- 
lished under his direction and with his revision ; 
the Sonnets were printed without his sanction ; 
the " Passionate Pilgrim " was fraudulently issued 
as from his hand ; while of the sixteen plays which 
were published in quarto form before his death, it 
is believed that none was issued with his consent 
or revision. These publications were speculative 
ventures, and the text presented was made up 
either from reports of plays taken down in short- 
hand in the theatres, from separate parts, or com- 
plete plays surreptitiously secured, and hurried 
through the press without correction. Under these 
conditions the opportunities for errors of all kinds 
were practically without number; and a further 
and prolific source of error was found in the cus- 
tom which prevailed in the old printing-houses of 
reading the matter to be set up to the printers 
instead of placing it before them. The surprising 
fact about the text of the Shakespearian plays, when 
these circumstances are taken into consideration, 
is not that the difficulties, obscurities, and uncer- 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 403 

tainties are so many, but that they are so few 
relatively to the magnitude of his work. 




poets' corner, WESTMINSTER. 



In 1623 the poet's friends and fellow-actors, John 
Heminge and Henry Condell, at the suggestion of 
a small group of printers and publishers, brought 
together thirty-six plays under the three divisions 



404 William shakespeare 

of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. " Pericles " 
was omitted. The title-page declared that the 
plays were printed " according to the true originall 
copies " ; the text was probably that of the acting 
versions in the possession of the company with 
which Shakespeare had been associated, in which 
there were great variations from the dramatist's 
original work. For this reason the text of the 
First Folio is in many places inferior to that of 
the sixteen quartos, which, although surreptitiously 
issued, gave the text of acting versions in use at an 
earlier date. The Droeshout portrait was engraved 
on the title-page of the First Folio, and the edition 
was dedicated to William Herbert, Earl of Pem- 
broke, and to his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of 
Montgomery. The editors declared that their 
object in issuing the plays in this form was to 
" keepe the memory of so worthy a friend and 
fellow alive as was our Shakespeare." " I doubt," 
writes Mr. Lowell, " if posterity owes a greater debt 
to any two men living in 1623 than to the two 
obscure actors who in that year published the first 
folio edition of Shakespeare's plays. But for them 
it is more than likely that such of his w^orks as had 
remained to that time unprinted would have been 
irrevocably lost, and among them were 'Julius 
Caesar,' ' The Tempest,' and ' Macbeth.' " 

The noble eulogy with which Ben Jonson enriched 
the First Folio was in the key of the entire body 
of contemporary comment on Shakespeare's nature 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 405 

and character. The adjective " sweet " was com- 
monly apphed to him ; he was described as 
" friendly," as having " a civil demeanour " and 
" an open and free nature " ; and tradition later 
affirmed that he was " very good company, and of 
a very ready and pleasant smooth wit." The two 
or three vague traditions of irregularity of life may 
be dismissed as unsubstantiated. The standards of 
his time, the habits of his profession, the circum- 
stances of his early life, and the autobiographic 
note in the Sonnets make it probable that in his 
youth, at least, he was not impeccable. That he 
was essentially a sound man, living a normal, whole- 
some life, is rendered practically certain by his 
success in dealing with practical affairs, and by his 
long-sustained power of producing great works of 
art on the highest levels of thought and workman- 
ship. Such industry, sagacity, and thrift as Shake- 
speare showed are never associated with disorderly 
living; while the consistent objectivity of his atti- 
tude toward life is impossible to any man whose 
moral or intellectual sanity is seriously impaired. 

Shakespeare's resources, both material and spirit- 
ual, were harvested with a steady hand. While 
many men of his profession wasted their means and 
their strength in disorderly living, he invested the 
money earned in London in building up the fortunes 
of his family in Stratford. Generous by nature and 
richly endowed with imagination and passion, he was 
never prodigal either of his genius or his estate. 



406 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Early in his career he laid the foundations of a solid 
prosperity, and when he had secured a competence 
he retired from active work to enjoy the harvest of 
a diligent and well-ordered life. 

Among the many great qualities which combined 
to make him a master of life and of art, sanity must 
be given a first place ; and sanity is as much a mat- 
ter of character as of mind. When one takes into 
account the power of passion that was in him, and 




j»ij.-.J.,.^i. ^,.: ■ / ' J ^_! I _, 



* 



SHAKESPEARE'S BfiA¥H-RECORD. 

the license and extravagance of his time, his poise 
and balance become as marvellous as his genius. 
He avoided as if by instinct those eccentricities of 
taste, interest, subject, and manner to which many 
of his contemporaries fell victims, and which men 
of sensitive imagination often mistake for evidences 
and manifestations of genius. 

Shakespeare kept resolutely to the main high- 
ways of life, where the interest of the great human 
movement is always deepest and richest if one has 
adequate range of vision. He dealt with the ele- 
mental and universal experiences in broad, simple, 



THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD 407 

vital forms, and in a language which was familiar 
and yet of the largest compass. There was nothing 
esoteric in his thought or his method; he was too 
great to depend upon secret processes, or to • con- 
tent himself with any degree of knowledge short 
of that which had the highest power of diffusion. 
Although the keenest of practical psychologists, he 
did not concern himself with curious questions of 
mental condition, nor with spiritual problems which 
are elusive and subtle rather than vital and pro- 
found. He was too great an artist to mistake psy- 
chological analysis, however skilful and interesting, 
for literature. 

As he studied life and passed through its experi- 
ences he saw with increasing clearness the moral 
order of the world, the ethical relation of the indi- 
vidual to society and to his environment, the signifi- 
cance of character as the product of will, and the 
gradation of qualities in a scale of spiritual values. 
His work as an artist deepened and widened as he 
grew in the wisdom of life. Such wisdom, and its 
expression in work of sustained power, come to 
those only whose natures are harmonious with the 
fundamental laws of life, and who keep themselves 
in wholesome relations with their kind. 

Too great in himself to become a cynic, and of a 
vision too broad and penetrating to rest in any kind 
of pessimism, Shakespeare grew in charity as he in- 
creased in knowledge. He loved much because he 
knew men so well. A deep and tender pity was 



4o8 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



distilled out of his vast experience, and his last 
work was the ripe fruit of the beautiful humaniza- 
tion of his genius accomplished in him by the disci- 
pline and the revelation of life in his personal history. 
" The Tempest " and " The Winter's Tale," coming 
at the end of a long and arduous career, are the 
convincing witnesses of the harmony of life and art 
in which resides the secret of Shakespeare's noble 
fertility and sustained power. The path which led 
from " Titus Andronicus " to " The Tempest " must 
have been one of orradual but unbroken ascent. To 
keep in one's soul the freshness of perception and 
imagination which touches " The Tempest " with 
the light that never fades, one must be great in 
heart and in life as well as in creative power. 
When Prometheus brought the arts of life to men, 
he did not leave them skill without inspiration ; he 
brought them hope also. Shakespeare's genius, 
shining on the darkest ways, seems to touch the 
sky beyond the horizon with light. 




CARVING FROM STALLS OF HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD. 



INDEX 



Actor, Shakespeare as an, 104, 118. 

Actors, professional, created by the 
Moralities, 16; their position by the 
middle of the sixteenth century, 78 ; 
Elizabeth a patron of, 106 ; Leicester's 
company of, 106-108, 114; a perform- 
ancedescribed,io9-iii ; Shakespeare's 
name on lists of, 117; the address to, 
in " Hamlet," 118 ; opposition of the 
City to, 128-131 ; in the " War of the 
Theatres," 277-280, 310; boys as, 108, 
309-312, 389 ; reference in " Hamlet " 
to the strife between boy and adult, 
310. 

Adam, in "As You Like It " played by 
Shakespeare, 117. 

Adaptation of his own plays, 205, 262. 

Adaption of Plays by Shakespeare, 137, 
139-144, 148. 

Alleyne, Edward, the star of the Admi- 
ral's Men, 116. 

"All's Well that Ends Well," source of 
its plot, 311-313; alluded to, 315. 

"A Lover's Complaint" alluded to 
among the poetical writings of Shake- 
speare, 137, 177; published with the 
Sonnets, but little else is known of it, 
224. 

" A Midsummer's Night's Dream," War- 
wickshire in, 62; alluded to, 60, 95, 
177, 183, 381; sources of, 203; metre, 
205 ; the great popularity of, 205. 

Analysis of special characters in Shake- 
speare's plays: Talbot, 154; Biron, 
168 ; Falstaff, 237-239, 263 ; Shylock, 
252-254; Jaques, 268; Hamlet, 306- 
310; Helena, 312, 313; Othello, 322; 
Macbeth, 326-329; Lear, 332, 333; 
Timon, 334; Coriolanus, 340. 

Angelo, Michael, alluded to, 195. 

" Antony and Cleopatra," alluded to, 304 ; 
the source of, 293, 335-338. 

Arden, Mary. See Shakespeare, Mary. 

Arden, Robert, of Wilmcote, grandfather 
of the poet, 33, 256. 



" Arden of Feversham," credited to 

Shakespeare by some critics, 24. 
Armada, the, alluded to, 24, 138. 
Armado in " Love's Labour's Lost," 166. 
"Arte of English Poesie," by Puttenham, 

102, 138. 
"As You Like It," Warwickshire in, 62, 

266; Shakespeare as Adam in, 117; 

its plot, etc., 266-268 ; alluded to, 

170. 
Aubrey, authority for the report that 

Shakespeare assisted his father after 

leaving school, 51 ; quoted, 95. 
Autographs of the poet, 394. 
Ayrer, Jacob, 379; his "Die Schone 

Sidea" very similar in plot to "The 

Tempest," 379. 

Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, portrait, 
312; alluded to, 394. 

Baker, Mrs., late custodian of the Birth- 
place, 85. 

Bale, — , author of " King Johan " and 
other Chronicle plays, 23. 

Ballad-dance, the, 3. 

Bandello, the story of Romeo and Juliet 
in a " nouvelle" by, 201; some of the 
plot of " Much Ado about Nothing " 
due to, 265 ; the ultimate source of 
" Twelfth Night," 270. 

Barnard, Sir John, of Abingdon, second 
husband of Elizabeth Hall, the poet's 
granddaughter, 258, 392. 

Barnfield, Richard, lines by, on Shake- 
speare's " Venus " and " Lucrece," 196. 

Bear-baiting Garden, the, illustration, 
117. 

Beaumont, Francis, alluded to, 239 ; por- 
trait of, 240; lines by, on the Mermaid 
Tavern, 274. 

Belleforest, the story of Hamlet in the 
Histoires Tragiques of, 302. 

Bermudas, the, and "The Tempest," 

378, 379- 
Bible, Shakespeare's study of the, 47. 



409 



4IO 



INDEX 



Birthplace, the, of Shakespeare, illustra- 
tion, 31 ; detailed description of, 35- 
37 ; inherited by Shakespeare, 361, 
391 ; by his daughter, 392; by his sis- 
ter's grandson, 35, 392. 

Blackfriars, Vautrollier a publisher in, 
loi ; Shakespeare's house in, 392, 394, 

397- 
Blackfriars Theatre, built by the elder 

Burbage, 116; secured for the use of 

the Children of the Chapel, 310; 

Shakespeare's income from, 389. 
Boccaccio, the source of " All's Well 

that Ends Well," 312; and qf " Cym- 

beline,'' 369. 
Bond, the marriage, of Shakespeare and 

Anne Hathaway, 85, 86. 
Boy actors, 108 ; the strife between adults 

and, 309-312, 389 ; the reference to in 

" Hamlet," 310. 
Brandes, Mr. Georg, on Shakespeare's 

visiting Italy, 1 19-122. 
Brooke, Arthur, author of a poetical 

version of the story of " Romeo and 

Juliet," 200. 
Burbage, James, actor and a liveryman 

in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, 93, 

103 ; a Stratford man by birth, 102 : 

owner of The Theatre, 103 ; builder of 

Blackfriars Theatre, 116, 310. 
Burbage, Richard, son of James, 93, 103; 

a member of the King's Players, 

108 ; of Shakespeare's company, 116 ; 

builder of the Globe Theatre, 116, 

398 (?) ; alluded to, 279. 
Bushnell, Dr., quoted, 251. 

Camden, William, 280. 

Cavendish, George, 383. 

Cecil, Sir Robert, Raleigh's letter to, 

163. 
Chamberlain, the Lord, his company of 

players, 116, 270. 
Chapman, George, portrait, 226; his 

Homer, 229, 293, 317; alluded to, 216, 

225. 
Charlecote, illustration of, 67; descrip- 
tion of, 67-70; alluded to, 52, 65, 74, 

82, 83. 
Charlecote Church, the Lucy monument 

in, 84. 
Charlecote Park, 82. 
Charles L, alluded to, 99. 
Chaucer, alluded to, 20, 115, 192; the 

seven-line stanza brought from France 



by, 192; his " Canterbury Tales," 267, 

317- 

Chester, Robert, his " Love's Martyr," 
containing Shakespeare's " The PhcE- 
nix and the Turtle," 225. 

Chettle, Henry, publishes Greene's attack 
on Shakespeare, and later an apology, 
159 ; complains of the poet's silence 
after the death of Queen Elizabeth, 
288. 

Children of the Chapel, 310. 

Chronicle plays, 23; practically cover a 
period of four centuries of English his- 
tory, 24; thoroughly representative in 
character, 149 ; alluded to, 230, 236, 
296. 

Chronology, the, of Shakespeare's plays, 
144, 148. 

Church, the, its attitude toward the play- 
ers of the Middle Ages, 6; its own 
appeal to the dramatic instinct, 7 ; its 
Mass such an appeal, 7, 8 ; its tableaux 
of New Testament scenes, 9 ; neglected 
for the theatre, 131. 

Cinthio, the plot of " Measure for Meas- 
ure " in a novel by, 316, 322. 

City, the, opposes theatres, 130. 

Classical stage, the, in its effect on Eng- 
lish art, 21, 172. 

Clopton, 74. 

Clopton Bridge, 31, 39,324 (illustration). 

Clopton, Sir Hugh, 31, 74, 257. 

Clopton, Sir John, 74. 

Coleridge, quoted on Shakespeare's mo- 
rality, 174 ; on " Venus and Adonis," 
193-195 ; on " Macbeth," 327. 

Combe, John, 394. 

Comedy, the earliest English, 19; its 
earlier development as compared to 
tragedy accounted for, 21 ; and history, 
alternation of in the poet's productions, 
235, 248 ; Shakesperian, defined, 250. 

Comedies of Shakespeare, the, 248, 250; 
" The Merry Wives of Windsor," 261- 
265 ; " Much Ado about Nothing," 264- 
266; "As You Like It," 266-268; 
" Twelfth Night," 268-270 ; alluded to, 

315. 344- 

Condeli, Henry, one of the editors of the 
First Folio, 108, 403; Shakespeare's 
bequest to, 398 ; alluded to, 116. 

" Coriolanus," 290, 339-341 ; source of, 

339- 
Court, the poet's relations to, 198, 286, 320. 
Crown Inn, the, at Oxford, 92, 93, 401. 



INDEX 



411 



Curtain Theatre, one of the two in exist- 
ence in 1586, loi ; the only rival of 
The Theatre, 108, 114. 

" Cymbeline " included among Tragedies 
in the First Folio, 364, 365 ; source of, 
364, 369, 372; alluded to, 363, 387. 

DEtniel, 216. 

D'Avenant, 401. 

" Decameron," the, source of the plot of 
"All's Well that Ends Well," 312; of 
"Cymbeline," 369. 

Dekker, 229, 394. 

Dennis, John, quoted, concerning " The 
Merry Wives of Windsor," 262. 

De Quincey on " Macbeth," 328. 

Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 285- 
288, 290; portrait, 285; alluded to in 
" Henry V.," 286. 

Dionysus, growth of the myth, 2. 

" Discourse of English Poetrie," 138. 

" Downfall of Robert, Earl of Hunting- 
ton," 24. 

Drake, Sir Francis, 138. 

Drama, the early, first steps in its growth, 
i; the myth, 2; the ballad-dance, 3; 
begins in worship, 4; inevitable in 
every age, 4 ; grew vulgar as the Ro- 
man populace sank, 5 ; condemned by 
the Church, 6; developed by the ap- 
peal of the Church to the dramatic 
instinct, 7; developed also by scrip- 
tural tableaux, 9. 

Drama, early English, the Church the 
chief influence in making, 6; the earli- 
est Passion play, 10; the Mystery or 
Miracle play, 11, 12; the realism of 
the semi-sacred play, 12, 13 ; the Mo- 
ralities, 14-16 ; the Interlude, 17, 18 ; 
the earliest comedies, 19; the com- 
parative development of comedy and 
tragedy, 21 ; Chronicle plays, 23, 149 ; 
Lyly's comedies, 25, 162, 163 ; the im- 
mediate predecessors and older con- 
temporaries of the poet in, 24, 155; its 
condition about 1585, 26, 105-118; 
tragedy, 28. 

Drama, Elizabethan, the, 105-118 ; full of 
the spirit of the age, 113 ; growth of, 114, 
125 ; surprisingly wholesome in view of 
the influence of the Italian Renaissance, 
132-134; as a literary form, 135; as 
, an opportunity of expression, 136; un- 
certainty of the text of, 140; the ethical 
significance of Shakespearian, 342- 



359. See Histories, Comedies, and 
Tragedies of Shakespeare. 

Drayton, Michael, portrait of, 179; al- 
luded to, 197, 216. 

Droeshout, Martin, portrait of Shake- 
speare by, 150, 273J 400, 401. 

Drummond of Hawthornden, 373. 

" Duchess of Norfolk," 24. 

" Duke Humphrey," 24. 

Earl of Worcester's Company of Play- 
ers, 39. 

Eastcheap, 98. 

Edgar Tower, the, at Worcester, 85. 

Editions of Shakespeare's works. See 
under First Folio. 

Education, not necessarily academic, 41, 
42; formal literary, in Shakespeare's 
time, 44; the poet's early, 46-51. 

" Edward III.," 23. 

Elizabeth, Princess, the marriage of, 374, 
382,391. 

Elizabeth, Queen, her delight in pageants, 
52 ; visits Warwickshire, 52-56 ; diver- 
sions at Kenilworth in honour of, 53 ; 
the splendour of, 55; a patron of the 
theatre, 106; her enjoyment of Falstaff, 
262 ; at the opening of the seventeenth 
century, 284, 290; her death, 320. 

English Language, the, when Shake- 
speare began to use it, 134. 

Essex. See Devereux. 

" Euphues," 25, 137. 

Fairfax, his " Tasso," 229, 293. 

Falstaff, his fondness for Eastcheap, 98; 
the humour of, 237; at first named Sir 
John Oldcastle, 238 ; the character of, 
developed in "The Merry Wives of 
Windsor," by order of Elizabeth, 262, 
263. 

"Ferrex and Porrex,"or"Gorbordoc,"22. 

Field, Richard, loi ; publisher of the 
earliest of Shakespeare's publications, 
loi, 187, 191 ; of other influential works, 
102, 187. 

Fleay, 318. 

Fletcher, John, alluded to, 239, 384, 385, 
386 ; his portrait, 231. 

Florio, John, his " Montaigne," 293, 306, 
381. 

Folio, the First, alluded to, 381, 364; the 
editors of, 402, 404. 

Forest of Arden, 30, 62, 64, 73, 74, 186, 
a66, 267. 



412 



INDEX 



Forman, Dr. Simon, 328, 369, 374; his 

" Book of Plays," 374. 
Fortune Theatre, 109, 116. 
French, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 46, 

47- 
Fuller, Thomas, quoted as comparing 

Jonson and Shakespeare, 275. 

" Gammer Gurlon's Needle," 19. 

Gastrell, Rev. Francis, 258. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, his " Historia 
Britonum," 330. 

Ghost, the, in Hamlet played by Shake- 
speare, 117. 

Globe Theatre, illustration of, 25, 115; 
described, 109 ; built by Richard Bur- 
bage, 116; "Richard II." at the, 286; 
" Macbeth " at the, 328 ; the burning 
of the, 383; its receipts, 389; the Globe 
company, 310; alluded to, 198, 241, 

369. 374- 

Gollancz, quoting Gabriel Harvey, 197. 

Grammar School, the, of Stratford, 31, 
38 ; described, 42-44 ; a free school, 
48 ; Shakespeare's early leaving, 49, 
51 ; alluded to, 54, 160, 293. 

Grammaticus, Saxo, 301. 

Granville, 138. 

Grave, the, of Shakespeare, and the lines 

- above it, 396-398 : of Anne Hathaway 
and its inscription, 399. 

Gray's Inn Fields, 98. 

Green, on the Elizabethan Theatre, 114. 

Greene, Robert, one of Shakespeare's 
older contemporaries, 26 ; a born story- 
teller, 27 ; credited with part author- 
ship of " Henry VI.," 152; his history, 
155 ; his fight against the new order, 
157 ; his attack on Marlowe, 158 ; his 
attack on Shakespeare, 159; his "A 
Groatsworth of Wit," 156, 274, 370 ; 
his reference to an early Hamlet, 302 ; 
his " Pandasto," 370 ; alluded to, 137, 
229, 266, 372, 373. 

Greene, Thomas, town clerk of Stratford, 

395- 

Greenwich Palace, 261. 

" Groatsworth of Wit," Greene's pam- 
phlet, 156, 274, 370. 

Guild Chapel, the, at Stratford, 31, 42, 43, 
74, 257, 260. 

Hagenbach, quoted, 7. 
Hall of the Middle Temple, 268 ; illus- 
tration, 269. 



Hall, Dr. John, 258, 391, 395, 399. 

Hall, Elizabeth, 258, 391, 392, 396. 

Hall, Mrs. Susannah. See Shakespeare, 
Susannah. 

Hall, William, 223, 242, 292. 

Halliwell-Phillipps quoted, 77, 93. 

Hamlet, the character, compared to 
Brutus, 298 ; origin of his story, 300- 
302 ; aspects of his character, 306-308. 

" Hamlet," 23; the Ghost, Shakespeare's 
most notable role, 117 ; shows traces of 
the older drama, 147 ; sources of, 300- 
303 ; first published, 304 ; problems of, 
306; alluded to, 118, 240,248, 298, 315, 
381. 

Hampton Lucy, the road to, 69-72. 

Hampton Lucy bridge, 70. 

Hart, Joan, 35. See Shakespeare, Joan. 

Harvey, Gabriel, 197. 

Hathaway, Anne, alluded to, 29, 38, 85; 
her marriage bond, 86-88 ; her hus- 
band's senior, 88 ; her children, 85, 87, 
91 ; her death, 399 ; lines over her 
grave, 399. 

Hathaway, Richard, 85 ; father-in-law of 
Shakespeare, 85. 

Hazlitt, on " Much Ado about Nothing," 
265. 

Heine, Heinrich, 350, 351. 

Heminge, John, one of Shakespeare's 
friends, 102, 398 ; one of the editors of 
the First Folio, 108, 403 ; one of the 
Lord Chamberlain's Men, 116. 

Henley Street, Stratford, Shakespeare's 
birthplace a cottage on, 33, 35, 36; 
alluded to, 43, 361, 391, 392. 

Henrietta Maria, Queen, entertained at 
New Place in 1643, 258. 

Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I., 
portrait, 343. 

"Henry IV.," 230, 234, 235, 237, 239- 
241, 261, 262; the second part, 255. 

" Henry V.," 23, 230, 235, 236, 241, 261, 
286. 

" Henry VI.," Part I., 145 ; its three parts, 
152-154. 156, 157. 160, 183, 230, 243. 

"Henry VIII.," 231, 241, 363, 383-385; 
source, 383 ; its first night, 383. 

Herbert, Philip, Earl of Montgomery, 

404. 
Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke, 

221, 222, 320, 404; portrait, 213. 
" Hero and Leander," 28, 191. 
Heywood, John, 18, 19. 

Heywood, Thomas, 227, 229. 



INDEX 



413 



Histories, the, among Shakespeare's 
plays, 228-231; the material of, 143, 
149, 151, 242; " Richard II.," 232; 
" King John," 233 ; " Henry IV.," 234- 
240; "Henry V.," 241 ; " Henry VI.," 
153, 243; " Henry VIII.," 241 ; hardly 
second to the Tragedies in importance, 

151- 

Holinshed's " Chronicles," the indebted- 
ness of Shakespeare to, 151, 242, 292, 
369 ; the source of " Henry VI.," 153 ; 
followed in " Richard II." and " Rich- 
ard III.," 232, 233, 294; the source of 
"Henry IV.," 235; suggested "Mac- 
beth," 325 ; and " King Lear," 330. 

Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, 31 ; illus- 
tration, 45 ; alluded to, 71, 74, 88, 260; 
bust of Shakespeare in, 272, 273, 399, 
400. 

Holy Trinity Churchyard, 256, 392, 397. 

" Hotspur," 24. 

Inferences from a dramatist's work dan- 
gerous, 88-90. 
Interlude, the, 17, 18. 
Italian, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 46, 

47. 
Italy, the teacher of Western Europe, 
21 ; its influence on England in the 
sixteenth century, 120, 121 ; possible 
visit of Shakespeare to, 119, 124; its 
influence on Chaucer and others, 120, 
and on the English imagination, 132- 
134; its general influence on Europe, 
161, 162, 209. 

Jaggard, William, 226. 

James I. on the growth of London, 99; 
a patron of the stage, 320, 329 ; por- 
trait, 337; alluded to, 290. 

Jew, the, in 1596, 253, 254. 

Johnson, Robert, 382. 

Jonson, Ben, ridiculed for including plays 
among his " Works," 141 ; prices paid 
for his plays, 142; his " Irene," 189 ; a 
contributor to Chester's " Love's Mar- 
tyr," 225 ; portrait, 278 ; a combatant 
in the " War of the Theatres," 277- 
279 ; a sketch of the life of, 280-284 ; 
his personal appearance, 281 ; his char- 
acter, 281, 282; his criticism of Shake- 
speare's lack of scholarship, 282; his 
tribute to Shakespeare, 283; the " Poet- 
aster," 284; his " Sejanus " and " Cati- 
line," 299; the spelling of his name, 



394 ; his Eulogy of Shakespeare in the 
First P^olio, 404; alluded to, 47, 229, 

239- 375- 

Jonson, Gerard, 273, 399. 

"Julius Caesar," criticised by Jonson, 
282; political situation when it was 
written, 290; source of, in Plutarch, 
293; modification of the original in, 
294, 29s ; publication of, 296 ; analysis 
of the play, 296, 299, 338 ; preserved in 
the First Folio, 404. 

Kempe, 279. 

Kenilworth Castle, 52; the entertain- 
ment of Queen Elizabeth at, 53, 56; 
old drawing of, 57 ; alluded to, 58, 65 ; 
Mervyn's Tower, 58, 59 ; the loveliness 
of its ruins, 61. 

" King Johan," 23. 

" King John," the prelude of the histori- 
cal plays, 230; completed about 1595, 
233 ; a recast, 233 ; has no hero, 234. 

" King Lear," description of Dover cliff 
in, 46; its landscape exceptional, 62; 
the sublimest height of the poet's tragic 
art, 329; performed before the King, 
329 ; sources of, 330, 331 ; analysis of, 
331-335 ; alluded to, 23, 325, 372. 

King's servants, the, 320, 321. 

Kyd, Thomas, one of Shakespeare's 
immediate predecessors as a play- 
wright, 26, 229 ; his " Spanish Tragedy," 
303- 

Landor, Walter Savage, his " Citation 
and Examination of William Shake- 
speare," 84. 

Landscape, influence of, on the verse of 
Scott, Burns, Wordsworth, 62; the 
Italian, 64. 

Latin, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 44, 46. 

Law, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 47. 

Lee, Sidney, on Shakespeare's Sonnets, 
218 ; on his acting before King James, 
32X ; on his expenditures, 390. 

Leicester, the Earl of, his entertainment 
of Queen Elizabeth, 53, 56, 61 ; por- 
trait, 1588, 60; his company of players, 
106-108, 114. 

Leicester Hospital, 65. 

Lodge, his death in 1625, 26 ; his plays, 
27 ; one of the group in possession of 
the stage on the arrival of Shake- 
speare, 25, 155, 229; his " Rosalynde" 
the source of the plot of " As You Like 



414 



INDEX 



it," 266; his allusion to an early Ham- 
let, 302; alluded to, 156, 267. 

London, Shakespeare's journey to, 91 ; 
in the sixteenth century, 96; streets, 
97; the city, 98: its growth, 98-100; in 
1543, 198-200; alluded to, 90, 160. 

London Bridge, 96, 99. 

" Lord Chamberlain's Men," the, 116, 
270. 

" Love's Labour's Lost," the first touches 
of the poet's hand shown in among 
others, 145 ; betrays the influence of 
Lyly, 160, 166; played before the 
Queen, 164; satirizes the times, 165, 
183; betrays the youth of the writer, 
166; analysis of, 167-170 ; three poems 
from, in " The Passionate Pilgrim," 
226; alluded to, 204, 249. 

"Love's Labour's Won," mentioned by 
Meres, probably the same as " All's 
Well that Ends Well," 311. 

Lucy, Sir Peter, 83. 

Lucy, Sir Thomas, of Charlecote, 52, 82, 
83. 85. 

Lydgate, his Troy Book, 317. 

Lyly, John, a sketch of, 160-163 '< ^^^ 
influence on Shakespeare's " Love's 
Labour's Lost," 160, 166, 179 ; one 
of the group in possession of the stage 
on Shakespeare's arrival in London, 
229 ; his " Euphues," 25, 137, 163. 

Lyrical poetry, Shakespeare's contribu- 
tion to, 209. 

" Macbeth," contrast of landscape in this 
and other plays, 62 ; contains traces of 
the older drama, 147 ; sources of, 325 ; 
analysis of, 326; parts of, said to be 
by Middleton, 327; De Quincey on 
the introduction of the comic element, 
328 ; Dr. Forman's account of the per- 
formance of, in 1611, 328; unprinted 
until in the First Folio, 404. 

Magdalen College, Oxford, 160. 

Malone, on the authorship of " Henry 
VL," 152. 

Manningham, John, quoted, 268, 370. 

Marlowe, Christopher, leader of the 
group of men who controlled the 
stage at the time of Shakespeare's 
arrival in London, 26, 138, 155, 229; 
a sketch of, 27 ; his writings, 28 ; his 
influence on English poetry, 136, 146, 
147; his death, 137; credited with part 
authorship of " Henry VL," 152 ; at- 



tacked by Greene, 157, 158 ; his influ- 
ence shown in some of Shakespeare's 
plays, 160, 179, 231, 233, 252; identified 
by some with the poet's " rival singer " 
of the Sonnets, 216; the parallelism 
between his " Edward H." and Shake- 
spea.re's "Richard II.," 232; his "Dr. 
Faustus," 28 ; his " Hero and Lean- 
der," 190; his "Jew of Malta," 252; 
his " Tamburlaine," 27, 157, 158, 232. 

Marston, 225, 229. 

Mass, the, a dramatization of certain 
fundamental ideas, 7 ; of the central 
mystery of the Christian faith, 8. 

Masuccio, the story of Romeo and Juliet 
sketched by, 201. 

" Measure for Measure," Shakespeare's 
modifications of the story of, 315, 316; 
sources of, 316, 322; produced about 
1603, 316. 

Menaschmi of Plautus, the, probable 
source of the plot of "The Coined)' 
of Errors," 172; said to be like 
" Twelfth Night " by John Manning- 
ham, 269. 

Meredith, George, quoted on the comic 
characters of Shakespeare, 251. 

Meres, Francis, on Shakespeare's poetry, 
196; his " Palladis Tamia," 311; his 
mention of " Love's Labour's Won," 

3"- 
Mervyn's Tower, Kenilworth Castle, 58, 

59- 

Middle Ages, isolation of castles and 
communities in the, 5. 

Middle Temple Lane, illustration, 294. 

Middleton, Thomas, 229, 327. 

Milton, alluded to, 121. 

Mimes, or players, in the Middle Ages, 
5; condemned by the Church, 6. 

Miracle play, 11; its realism, 12; com- 
pared with the Moralities, 15 ; alluded 
to, 20. 

"Mirrour of Magistrates," 22. 

Moralities, the, 14; compared to the 
Mystery and Miracle plays, 15 ; the 
important step in dramatic develop- 
ment marked by, 16 ; gradual transi- 
tion to the fully developed play from, 

17- 

More, Sir Thomas, 18. 

" Much Ado about Nothing," the perfec- 
tion of witty dialogue and repartee, 25 ; 
its contrast to "The Merry Wives of 
Windsor," 264 ; date and sources, 265. 



INDEX 



415 



Mystery play, the, foreshadowed in the 
fourth century Passion play, 10; in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 11; its 
realism in the fifteenth century, 12; 
compared with the Moralities, 15 ; 
alluded to, 20. 

Nash, Thomas, one of the playwrights 
controlling the stage just before the 
arrival of Shakespeare in London, 26, 
229 ; his character, 27, 155 ; addressed 
by Greene in "A Groatsworth of 
Wit," 156 ; drawn into the " War of 
the Theatres " by Greene, 158 ; his 
comment on " Henry VI.," 153. 

Nashe, Thomas, marries Elizabeth Hall, 
the granddaughter of Shakespeare, 258, 
397 ; his wife, 258, 392 ; portrait of, 
169. 

New Place, Stratford, Shakespeare's 
home in, 31, 93; the purchase of, 257, 
361 ; now a garden, 259 ; a commodi- 
ous building, 391. 

North, Thomas, his translation of Plu- 
tarch, 102, 151, 293. 

Norton, collaborator with Sackville in 
" Gorbordoc," 22. 

Old Clopton Bridge, 31, 39,; illustration, 

324. 
"Othello," mistakes in, 122; contains 

traces of the older drama, 147 ; sources, 

322 ; played before the King, 322 ; 

analysis of characters, 322-325; the 

great popularity of, 323. 
Oxford, 93, 95. 

Pageants, in the fifteenth century, 11, 12. 

" Passionate Pilgrim, the," piratical pub- 
lication of Shakespeare's poems in, 
208, 226; Shakespeare's name omitted 
from the title-page of the second edi- 
tion of, 227. 

Passion play, in the fourth century, 10. 

Pater, Mr., 162, 167. 

Paynter, his " Palace of Pleasure," 312, 

334. 376. 

Peele, one of the playwrights just preced- 
ing Shakespeare on the Elizabethan 
stage, 26, 155, 229; his characteristics, 
27 ; credited with part authorship in 
" Henry VI.," 152; addressed by Greene 
in "A Groatsworth of Wit," 156 ; Shake- 
speare drawn to, 179. 

Pembroke, Earl of. See Herbert. 



"Pericles," a new note struck in, 362; 
sources, 364 ; a drama of reconciliation, 
387 ; omitted from the First Folio, 404. 

Personification inevitable to an imagina- 
tive race, 2. 

Petrarch, the master of sonnet form in 
Italy, 209 ; Surrey and Wyatt's trans- 
lations of sonnets by, 210 ; Shake- 
speare's modification of the sonnet 
form used by, 211. 

Phillips, Augustus, 108, 116. 

Plague, in London, 124. 

Plautus, the source of the plot of " The 
Comedy of Errors," 172, 173, 269; 
Shakespeare's acquaintance with, 44. 

Player, the strolling, in the Middle Ages, 
5 ; condemned by the Church, 6; his 
position in England after the Conquest, 
6 ; the professional, created by the 
Moralities, 16; in Shakespeare's time, 
39. See Actor. 

Plays, in Shakespeare's time, 139; fre- 
quently altered, 140 ; property of the 
theatre, 139-141 ; rarely published, 141. 

Plutarch, his influence on Shakespeare, 
292, 376 ;_ North's translation of, 102, 
151, 293 ; the story of Timon from, 334 ; 
the story of Antony from, 335; the 
story of "Coriolanus" from, 339. 

Poaching, Rowe's story of Shakespeare's, 
82. 

Portraits of Shakespeare, 273, 400-402; 
the " Ely House " portrait, frontis- 
piece ; the Stratford portrait, 37 ; the 
Zoust portrait, 94 ; the Black Bust, 
owned by the Garrick Club, 123; the 
J. Q. A. Ward statue in Central 
Park, New York, 135 ; the Droeshout 
engraving, 150; the statue on the 
Gower Memorial, 171 ; the monument 
in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, 
272. 

Puritan party, in opposition to theatres, 
106, 125, 130-133; Shakespeare not a 
member of the, 354, 395. 

Queen's Company of Players, the, 39. 
Quiney, Richard, 37, 260. 
Quiney, Thomas, 38, 260, 393. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 138, 163. 
" Ralph Roister Doister," 19. 
Ravenscroft, Edward, 146. 
Register of the Stationers Company, 79, 
144. 252. 



4i6 



INDEX 



Religion in the fifteenth century, 13, 
14. 

Renaissance influence, the, at its height 
in Shakespeare's time, 44; Italy the 
birthplace of, 120; surprisingly whole- 
some considering the moral life of 
Italy at the time, 132-134; made 
Europe a community in intellectual 
interests, 161 ; the suggestiveness of, 
181; freedom secured by, 184, 185, 
343- 355 ■> lov^ of beauty a character- 
istic of, 190, 343. 

"Richard II.," published in 1597, 148; 
reflects the genius of Marlowe, 160, 

230, 232; revived at the Globe, 286; 
its outline taken from Holinshed, 294. 

" Richard III.," published in 1597, 148; 
reflects the genius of Marlowe, 160, 

231, 232; Holinshed followed in, 232, 
294. 

Richardson, Locke, 48. 

Rjbsart, Amy, imprisoned in Mervyn's 
Tower, 58, 59. 

Romances, the, 363, 366, 368, 387 ; " Peri- 
cles," 363, 364 ; " Cymbeline," 364, 365 ; 
" The Winter's Tale," 372-375 ; " The 
Tempest," 377-383. 

Rome, the theatre of, 4, 5. 

" Romeo and Juliet," mistakes in, 122; 
shows among the first touches of the 
poet's hand, 145; published in 1597, 
148 ; in the front rank of English 
poetry, 183 ; shows the poet's develop- 
ment, 184; sources, 200, 201; analysis 
of, 201-203 ; affiliated to " A Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream " in lyric quality, 
204 ; alluded to, 324. 

Rose, the, 115, 116, 142, 198; production 
of" Henry VI." at, 153, 243. 

Rowe, his story of Shakespeare's poach- 
ing, 82; quoted again, 104, 117, 262. 

Sackville, one of the authors of " Gor- 

bordoc," 22. 
Sandells, Fulk, 86. 
Schlegel, quoted, on the historical plays, 

246. 
Sea- Venture, the, 378. 
Shakespeare, Edmund, 397. 
Shakespeare, Gilbert, 397. 
Shakespeare, Hamnet, 91 ; his death, 

230, 256, 290, 391 ; his grave, 397. 
Shakespeare, Joan, sister of William, 35, 

392, 398 ; the grandson of, 392 ; three 

sons of, 398. See Hart. 



Shakespeare, John, 32 ; his marriage to 
Mary Arden,33; his public offices, 34; 
his children, 34 ; his means, 39 ; finan- 
cial embarrassments, 49, 50, 255 ; 
alluded to, loi, 256; his coat-of-arms, 
32, 256, 257; his death, 289, 391. 

Shakespeare, Judith, the poet's youngest 
daughter, 38, 391 ; baptized, 91 ; mar- 
ried Thomas Quiney, 38, 260, 393, 398 ; 
her sons, 393; bequest to, in the poet's 
will, 398 ; her death, 394 ; her grave, 

397- 
Shakespeare, Mary, the poet's mother, 
wife of John, 33; heiress of Robert 
Arden of Wilmcote, 256; death of, 

391- 

Shakespeare, Richard, 33, 397. 

Shakespeare, Susannah, first child of 
William, 87, 91, 391, 393, 396, 397; 
marriage of, 391, 392; verse written 
of, 392. 

Shakespeare, William, development of 
the English drama before his time, 16- 
28 ; the dramatic form all but per- 
fected by his forerunners, 24; his 
immediate predecessors and older con- 
temporaries, 27, 155, 229 ; his birth and 
birthplace, 30-35 ; at four years old, 
39; his formal education, 42-51 ; after 
leaving school, 51, 77; our knowledge 
of his life, 77, 80 ; characteristics of his 
youth, 80, 81 ; his departure from 
Stratford, 82, 90 ; his marriage and 
marriage bond, 85-88; his children, 
85, 87, 91, 256, 258, 260, 391-394; his 
journey to London, 91, 93; his arrival, 
95 ; early association with theatres a 
matter of tradition, 103 ; joins Lord 
Leicester's Players, 108 ; in the com- 
pany of " Lord Chamberlain's Men," 
as actor and manager, 116-118; tours 
of his company, 119; his knowledge 
of Italy, iig-124; order of composi- 
tion of his plays, 144; his versification, 
145 ; earliest touches of his hand, 145- 
147; his first play in print, 148; his 
part in " Henry VI.," 152, 154 ; attacked 
by Greene, 156-159; " Love's Labour's 
Lost," 161-170; "The Comedy of 
Errors," 170-174; "The Two Gentle- 
men of Verona," 175 ; the poetic 
period, 177-227; stages of his poetic 
growth, 184; the publication of" Venus 
and Adonis," 187, 195; of " The Rape 
of Lucrece," 191, 195; culmination 



INDEX 



417 



of the lyrical period, 199; "Romeo 
and Juliet," 199-203; "A iVIidsummer 
Night's Dream," 203-206; the Sonnets, 
207-224 ; " The Rape ot Lucrece," 224 ; 
"A Lover's Complaint," 224, 225; 
"The Phcenix and the Turtle," 225; 
" The Passionate Pilgrim," 226, 227; the 
Histories, 228-247 ; the Comedies, 248- 
255,261-270; his return to Warwick- 
shire, 256, 290, 388; the purchase of 
New Place by, 257, 362 ; its restoration, 
258-260, 361 ; the approach of tragedy, 
271-289; portraits of, 273, 400, 401; 
social disposition of, 274 ; the " War 
of the Theatres," 277-280, 310; the 
earlier Tragedies, 290-314; the later 
Tragedies, 314-341 ; ethical significance 
of the Tragedies, 342-359 ; his view of 
man's place in nature, 346; his study 
of character in the Tragedies, 347-349 ; 

' as a poet, 349-351 ; the Tragedies the 
highest point of his art, 351 ; his ethi- 
cal view of life, 353; his relations to 
the Puritan party, 354, 395 ; his large- 
ness of view, 357-359 ; the Romances : 
"Pericles, 363, 364; " Cymbeline," 
364, 365; "The Winter's Tale," 372- 
375; "The Tempest," 377-383; his 
greatness as a poet, 376 ; his share 
in " Henry VH I.," 384-385 ; attitude 

' toward life of the Romances, 387 ; his 
last years in Stratford, 388 ; his income, 
389; his general circumstances, 390, 
391 ; his family, 391-394 ; the spelling 
of his name, 394 ; his religion unknown, 
395; his will, 395, 397-399; his death, 
395 ; lines over his grave, 397, 398 ; 
the Stratford bust and other portraits 
of, 399-402 ; the First Folio, 402-404 ; 
his personal character, 404-407. 

Shallow, Justice, 52, 68, 82, 83, 85. 

Shaw, Julius, 259. 

Shottery, 30, 61, 72, 86, 87 ; the path to, 79. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, his "Arcadia," and 
"Apologie for Poesie," 138, 229, 321; 
portrait, 139; alluded to, 22, 266, 287, 

394- 

Sill, Mr., quoted, 239. 

Snider, Denton, quoted, 342. 

Somers, Sir George, and the Sea- Venture, 
378. 

Sonnets, a favorite poetic form in the 
closing decade of the sixteenth century, 
207, 208 ; introduced from Italy by 
Surrey and Wyatt, 209 ; their transla- 



tions of Petrarch's, 210; other collec- 
tions of, 210 ; modern sequences of, 
211. 

Sonnets of Shakespeare, the, 207 ; pub- 
lished, 208; a sequence, 211; analysis 
of, 214; interpretations of, 218-220; 
alluded to, 273, 345, 366, 405. 

Sonnetteers of Shakespeare's time, 210. 

Southampton, Earl of. See Wriothes- 
ley. 

Spedding, Mr., 384, 385. 

Spenser, Edmund, a well-known name 
in Shakespeare's time, 138, 229 ; Shake- 
speare's love of pastoral life shared by, 
266, 267 ; his laxity in spelling of 
names, even his own, 394; his " Colin 
Clout," 229; his" Epithalamium,"229; 
alluded to, 287. 

Still, John, 20. 

St. Pancras, 98. 

St. Paul's Cathedral, 96, 98. 

St. Paul's Churchyard, 191. 

Stratford-on-Avon, its charm, 29; Shake- 
spearian associations, 29 ; in 1564, 30 ; 
its population, 32; Henley Street, 33- 
37; its love of the drama, 40; the 
Grammar School and Guild Chapel, 
43, 74; the landscape between Kenil- 
worth and, 54, 58, 65 ; the byways 
about, 60, 61; Warwick from, 66; 
between Hampton Lucy and, 71 ; 
events which led to the poet's departure 
from, 82-^85, 90; men from, among 
Shakespeare's friends, loi, 102, 187; 
touches of, in the poems or plays of 
Shakespeare, 186, 255; Shakespeare's 
return to, 256, 290, 388 ; his restoration 
of New Place in, 257, 361 ; later history 
of New Place, 258-260, 391, 392, 398; 
the bust of Shakespeare in the church 
at, 272, 273 ; the poet's property at, 361, 

390-393- 
Stuart, Mary, 55. 
Surrey, 120, 162, 209-211. 
Symonds, quoted, 157. 

Tableaux of New Testament scenes in 
the fifth century, 9. 

Talbot Inn, Chaucer's "Tabard," illus- 
tration, 20: alluded to, 115. 

Ten Brink, quoted, 368. 

Thames, the principal thoroughfare, 98, 

" The Atheist's Tragedy," 133. 

Theatre, the, loi, 103, 108, 114, 243; the 
library of, 142, 148. 



4i8 



INDEX 



Theatre of Rome, 4 ; increasingly vulgar 
as the populace sank, 5. 

Theatres of I^ondon in Shakespeare's 
time, loi, 108; their character, 105, 
113; opposition of the Puritan element 
to, 106, 125 ; support of Queen Eliza- 
beth, 106; arrangements of, 109-111; 
costume and scenery, iii, 112; attend- 
ance on, 114; location of, 127; oppo- 
sition of the City to, 130; of the 
Puritan party, 131. 

"The Comedy of Errors," shows some 
of the first touches of the poet's hand, 
145 ; first published, 170 ; presented 
at Gray's Inn, 172 ; sources of, 172 ; 
comparison with the play of Plautus, 
173 ; moral sanity of, 174 ; humour of, 
183 ; alluded to, 204, 249. 

" The contention of the two famous 
houses of York and Lancaster," 23. 

" The Duchess of Amalfi," 133. 

" The Massacre at Paris," 27. 

" The Merchant of Venice," evidence of 
Shakespeare's foreign travel, 121, 122; 
produced about 1596, 252 ; sources of, 
253 ; modification of the original mate- 
rial, 253 ; the poet's treatment of the 
Jew in, 252-254. 

" The Passionate Pilgrim," 137, 177, 226, 
227. 

"The Phoenix and Turtle," 137, 177, 
225. 

*' The Rape of Lucrece," loi, 137, 183, 
191-197, 209, 222, 224. 

" The Taming of the Shrew," allusions 
in, evidence of the poet's foreign travel, 
122; unmistakable references to War- 
wickshire in, 240, 255; based on an 
older play, 254. 

" The Tempest," predicted by " Pericles," 
freshness of, 365; sources, 377; the 
wreck of the Sea- Venture, 378, 379 ; 
analysis of, 380-382 ; title-page of, 381 ; 
probably his last play, 383, 386, 409 ; 
not published before the First Folio 
appeared, 404; alluded to, 60, 387. 

" The True Tragedy of Richard III.," 23. 

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona," mis- 
takes of locality in, 122; shows some 
of the first touches of the poet's hand, 
145 ; sources of, 175 ; slender in plot, 
183 ; in certain of its aspects of life con- 
nected with "A Midsummer Night's 
Dream," 204; comedy form of, 249; 
alluded to, 362. 



" The Winter's Tale," flowers of War- 
wickshire in, 62; alluded to, 362; its 
freshness, 365 ; sources of, 370-372 ; 
produced about 1611, 374; its popu-. 
larity, 374 ; analysis of, 374 ; alluded 
to, 387, 408. 

" Titus Andronicus," included among 
Shakespeare's plays, 145, 146, 148, 178, 
183 ; a characteristic Elizabethan play, 
146, 147 ; analysis of, 178. 

Tourneur, Cyril, alluded to, 120, 132, 

Tower of London, the, 96. 

Trade-guilds, centres of organized pres- 
entation of Miracle plays, 11. 

Tragedy, English, 28. 

Tragedies of Shakespeare, the, 245, 248, 
271, 278, 290, 314, 320, 360, 363, 364, 
366-369, 388 ; " Julius Caesar," 293-299; 
"Hamlet," 300-311; " All's Well that 
Ends Well," 311-313; "Measure for 
Measure," 315, 316; " Troilus and 
Cressida," 316-320; "Othello," 322- 
325; "Macbeth," 325-329; "King 
Lear," 329-333 ; " Timon of Athens," 
333. 334 ; " Antony and Cleopatra," 
335-338 ; " Coriolanus," 339-341 ; ethi- 
cal significance of, 342-359 ; the high- 
est point of Shakespeare's art, 351 ; the 
great insight of, due to Shakespeare's 
largeness of view, 358. 

"Troilus and Cressida," supposed to 
have had a part in the " War of the 
Theatres," 279 ; painful and repellent, 
315 ; belongs to the year 1603, 316 ; 
sources, 317; analysis of, 317-319; 
alluded to, 345. 

"Twelfth Night," produced, 1601, 268; 
source of, 269, 270; analysis of, 270: 
alluded to, 362. 

Twine, Lawrence, 364. 

Udall, Nicholas, 19. 

Vautrollier, Thomas, loi. 
" Venus and Adonis," loi, 137, 183, 184, 
186-197. 

Walker, William, godson to Shake- 
speare, 398. 

" War of the Theatres," the, 277, 280, 
309. 318. 

Warner, William, 172. 

Warwick, the town of, 66 ; from the Cov- 
entry road, 89 ; from the London road, 
236. 



INDEX 



419 



Warwick Castle, 67. 

Warwickshire landscape, the, 54, 56, 58- 
75 ; Shakespeare's familiarity with, 57, 
61, 80, 260; in midsummer, 59; the 
footpaths in, 59-61 ; touches of, in all 
Shakespeare's work, 62; its special 
charm, 64; along the Avon below the 
bridge, 67 ; references to, in " Henry 
VI.," 240; in "The Merry Wives of 
Windsor " and " The Taming of the 
Shrew," 255. 

Webster, alluded to, 120, 132. 

Weever, John, 196, 197. 



Whitehall, the old Palace at, 270 ; acting 
before the King at, 321, 329, 374. 

Wilmcote, 33, 49. 

Wilson, his " Cheerful Ayres and Bal- 
lads," 383. 

Wilton House, 320. 

Wotton, on the Masque at Cardinal 
Wolsey's, 383. 

Wriothesley, Henry, Earl of Southamp- 
ton, 188, 192, 222, 285-288, 291; por- 
trait, 223. 

Wyatt, 120, 209-2U. 



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